Bank hopes low rates will be short-lived

LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England hopes the current period of record low interest rates will be short-lived but cannot predict where rates will go over the next few months, the Bank's Deputy Governor Charles Bean said on Monday.

"We're trying to ensure that this is as short a lived period of unusually low interest rates as we can make it," Bean told BBC Radio Bristol.

"As the economy recovers so we would expect to reduce the unusual stimulus we put into the economy and push rates back up to a more normal level."

Bean said the recession would put downward pressure on inflation. He said anecdotal evidence from firms around the country suggested the economy had bottomed out but businesses were still cautious and reluctant to invest.

(Reporting by Christina Fincher and David Milliken)