HIGHLIGHTS-Bank of England's Carney speaks on 'super Thursday'

LONDON, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Bank of England Governor Mark Carney was speaking on Thursday after the release of the latest interest rate decision and inflation data.

Below are some of the comments:

INTEREST RATES AND STERLING

"There's no question the persistent strength of sterling is having an influence on policy, and it's one of the factors, but it has to persist. We will take it into account. But even taking it into account, the strength of sterling, and even taking into account the fiscal consolidation that were going to see over the coming years and the weakness in global demand, we see robust private sector growth here and consistent with that is a need to begin to increase interest rates.

"Sterling hasn't taken away that requirement."

INFLATION

"The near-term outlook for inflation is muted, as I said, and it wouldn't be surprising if we have another month or two of negative inflation given the very substantial moves in oil prices and the changes to some of the utility prices as well."

"In the committee's best collective judgement ... the market curve does not deliver a sustainable return of inflation to target, because there is an overshoot."

TIMING

"As the UK expansion progresses speculation about the precise timing of the first move in bank rate is increasing. This is understandable and it's another welcome sign of an economy that is returning to normal.

"The likely timing of the first bank rate increase is drawing closer. However the exact timing of the first move cannot be predicted in advance. It will be the product of economic developments and prospects. In short it will be data dependent."

ON END OF YEAR RISE?

"I didn't say rates increase around the year. I said ... that the decision around that comes into sharper relief."

STERLING

"There is substantial exchange rate pass through in our inflation forecasts, it does do a fair bit of the work in terms of ... keeping inflation down not just in the short term but over the relevant policy horizon."

RECENT DATA

"There's a couple of potential interpretations of what has happened. One would be that there are actually congestion effects in the labour market. In other words, as the labour market tightens, and we see that tightness in a number of ways, ... the movements may take times and you may get these sort of blips that are there. We'll learn more about that over time.

"The other thing that does appear to be happening is we are seeing, we may be seeing, this pick up in productivity that's there, and that is very good news for the sustainability of the recovery."

FALL IN INFLATION

"The most striking development in the UK over the past year has been the fall in CPI (Other OTC: CPICQ - news) inflation, which edged back down to zero percent in June.

"Around three quarters of this deviation of inflation from the two percent target reflect unusually low contributions from energy, food and other imported goods prices. The remaining part of the undershoot reflects the past weakness of domestic costs growth in wages in particular."

GLOBAL GROWTH

"Despite steady global growth, UK exports will still be held back by the strength of sterling. Risks to global growth are judged to be skewed moderately to the downside, reflecting risk to activity in the euro area and China. At home private domestic demand is robust and expected to remain so."

PRODUCTIVITY

"I would say we are mildly encouraged to see the most recent data, which does have a pickup in productivity. Now (NYSE: DNOW - news) , I just want to be clear what we have done with that, we haven't run to the other side of the boat as a consequence of a few good reports. We have taken about half of that improvement in productivity into the forecasts."

QE

"We will continue to reinvest any maturing proceeds at least until we get to raise interest rates. That's to provide clarity to the markets. We further said that we will not sell any ... of our gilts until we have raised interest rates to a level from which we can materially cut them.

"These are decisions of monetary policy.

"We will want to coordinate those decisions as much as possible with the debt management office because 375 billion of gilts is a material amount. What's incumbent on us... is to work through and then provide as much clarity as possible in advance about that potential programme." (Reporting by the London bureau)