Sir John Gieve, deputy governor of the Bank of England, said in a newspaper interview published on Monday he gave serious thought to another rise in interest rates at this month's Monetary Policy Committee Meeting.

Speaking to the Financial Times in his first newspaper interview since taking up his position in January, Gieve also revealed he came close to voting for an increase before the August rise was agreed.

And he said a recent slide in the price of oil did not necessarily relieve global inflationary pressures, the FT reported.

Gieve described the August decision to raise interest rates by a quarter percentage point to 4.75 percent as clear cut, noting the main reason behind his decision to back the move had been robust economic growth.

With consumer price inflation above target at 2.5 percent, it was also necessary to signal the fact that we were determined to bring inflation back to target, he told the FT.

As for this month's meeting, the deputy governor said: The issue was should we move again and I think there were three elements areas of uncertainty which I personally will be focussing on in the next few months.

The areas he listed were: immigration and the labour market; whether a recent rise in the price of imported goods reflected increased pressure on inflation from higher import prices and, finally, concern over U.S. housing prices.

The U.S. prospect is critical to the overall world growth picture and I think we'll get more sense of what's happening in the next couple of months (and) about how rapid that slowdown is, Gieve said.

At the same time, he added: So far, there is no great sign in the figures for the U.S. that the turndown is going to be a sharp and severe one.

The deputy governor, who has just returned from the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Singapore, felt inflation remained a key threat to the world and British economies.

Gieve also said that, with many geopolitical uncertainties, it was not guaranteed the reduction in oil prices would be sustainable.

He pointed out that most world growth forecasts were being revised up.

That in the end will feed through into the level of oil prices and other commodity prices, he added.

Inflation Bank of england