Monetary Policy Report forecast data

Downloads the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Report (MPR) and parses headline projections from the Projections Databank workbook. Returns a long-format data frame where each row is one (publication date, forecast horizon, series) triple.

Usage

boe_mpr_forecasts(
  series = c("cpi_inflation", "gdp_growth", "gdp_level", "unemployment", "bank_rate"),
  month = NULL,
  year = NULL,
  cache = TRUE
)

Source

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy

Arguments

series: Character vector. One or more of: "cpi_inflation", "gdp_growth", "gdp_level", "unemployment", "bank_rate". Defaults to all five.
month: Character. Publication month of the report, e.g. "february" or "may". The report is published roughly quarterly, but the exact month drifts between years (for example, the second 2026 report appeared in April, not May), so any month name is accepted and its existence is verified against the Bank's website. Supply with year. If both are NULL, the most recent compatible release is selected automatically.
year: Integer. MPR year, 2019 or later. Supply with month. If both are NULL, the most recent compatible release is selected automatically.
cache: Logical. Use cached download if available (default TRUE). Older releases never change so the cache never expires; the latest release is refreshed if older than 24 hours.

Value

A boe_tbl data frame with columns:

date: Date. Publication date of the MPR (start of quarter the report covers).
horizon: Character. Forecast horizon label (e.g. "2026 Q1").
horizon_date: Date. Start of the forecast quarter.
series: Character. Series identifier (e.g. "cpi_inflation").
value: Numeric. Forecast value (percent for rates and growth; index for gdp_level).

Details

Coverage runs quarterly from November 2019 (when the report was renamed from Inflation Report) to the latest published release.

Requires the readxl package. The MPR is published as a zip archive containing a Projections Databank workbook plus chart data and slides; this function only reads the projection sheets.

Each row of a projection sheet is one MPR publication; columns are forecast quarters. The same publication therefore contributes multiple rows here, one per forecast horizon.

Release format and automatic fallback

From the April 2026 report the Bank moved to a scenario-based "Scenario Projections Databank" with a transposed layout (following the Bernanke review of forecasting). That format is not parsed by this function yet. When automatic selection encounters such a release it skips it, falls back to the most recent compatible release (the classic "Projections Databank" workbook), and warns. Requesting a scenario-format release explicitly via month/year raises a clear error. Pre-2020 MPRs that predate the single "Projections Databank" workbook may also error.

Examples

# \donttest{
if (requireNamespace("readxl", quietly = TRUE)) {
  op <- options(boe.cache_dir = tempdir())

  # Latest CPI inflation projections
  cpi <- boe_mpr_forecasts(series = "cpi_inflation")
  head(cpi)

  options(op)
}
#> ℹ Downloading April 2026 MPR archive
#> ✔ Downloading April 2026 MPR archive [277ms]
#> 
#> ℹ Downloading February 2026 MPR archive
#> ✔ Downloading February 2026 MPR archive [239ms]
#> 
#> Warning: ! Skipping newer MPR release(s) in the Bank of England's new scenario-based
#>   format, not parsed by `boe_mpr_forecasts()` yet: "April 2026".
#> ℹ Returning the most recent compatible release: February 2026.
# }