At its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) maintained the Bank Rate unchanged at 10 percent. While inflation has recently fallen, the Committee anticipated that it will remain higher than the objective range in the short term due to the impact of the increase in value added tax (VAT) and the upward adjustment in administered prices.  It is, therefore, expected that inflation will fall within the 3 – 6 percent objective range in the second quarter of 2011 as the domestic economy grows at a moderate rate in the short-to-medium.  For more information, see the press release accompanying the decision.