are having to take action to claw back some of the costs associated with the credit card war and more recently the rising levels of personal bad debts".This price restructure comes as no surprise, especially with a report this week from PricewaterhouseCoopers hinting that card companies may look to bring in annual card fees to provide a much-needed revenue boost. The report estimated that investors who skip between the 0 per cent credit card offers cost the industry up to £600m a year.. Several providers including Barclaycard and Egg have also raised their standard interest rates recently.A spokesman for HBOS said: "We've always said we'll price according to market conditions, and obviously there's been a lot of changes in the marketplace. Almost all providers charge a fee for balance transfers, something that was almost unheard of two years ago. HBOS has become the latest company to cut back its introductory credit card offers, in a move which may signal the beginning the of the end for 0 per cent interest deals.
The bank's "One" Visa card has been among the most competitive credit cards on the market for the past year, offering 0 per cent for 12 months on purchases and balance transfers. Having introduced a 2 per cent fee on all transfers, it has also slashed the interest-free period on purchases to just three months, and raised the subsequent normal APR by three percentage points to 15.9 per cent. The move is the latest example of a credit card provider struggling to turn a profit on its new business, due to the intense level of competition in the market. Meanwhile, a survey showed that businesses were increasingly gloomy about their prospects as slowing economic growth and rising costs - which they are not passing on to customers - hit profit margins.A survey by the CBI and the Regional Development Agencies, taking in all sectors of the economy, shows today that employers are less optimistic about the general business situation than they were in the spring.. At the beginning of next year the focus will shift away from inflation back on to the expected disappointment in growth and that should allow interest rates to fall further."Its Monetary Policy Committee cut rates in August to 4.5 per cent, but by the narrowest of margins, leaving the Bank Governor Mervyn King outvoted and analysts split over whether the central bank will trim rates.
Mr King will publish the Bank's latest economic forecasts this morning which will give markets a clearer steer on how concerned policymakers are about inflation further out.While inflation is starting from a higher point than in August's quarterly report, yesterday's data - which was available to the MPC at last week's rate meeting - should encourage the more dovish MPC members that consumer price inflation was on a downward path. The annual rate of consumer price inflation, which the Bank of England targets, slowed to 2.3 per cent from a record 2.5 per cent in the previous month, data showed. The main reason was a 1.3p drop in the average cost of a litre of petrol on the UK's forecourts, compared with a rise of 1.8p a litre in October last year. It was still the fourth month in a row that CPI had exceeded the Bank's 2 per cent target, but analysts said the fall showed that energy costs were no longer pushing up inflation as fast as they were.John Butler, at HSBC, said: "The Bank of England, like other central banks, are clearly on inflation alert but so far so good, as the producer and consumer price data should help to ease those fears. It said incentives are in return for shops setting up dedicated Sony areas with specialised staff - services that online retailers are not able to offer.. Inflation slowed for the first time in more than a year last month, according to figures that leave the door open for a cut in interest rates next year. Shopping websites are wary of going on the record about the problem because they are afraid of being blacklisted by electronics heavyweights.
