In Britain, the base rate is the rate of interest that banks use as a basis when they are calculating the rates that they charge on loans.
[business]
Bank base rates of 7 per cent are too high.
base rate in British English
noun
1. British
the rate of interest used by individual commercial banks as a basis for their lending rates
2. British informal
the rate at which the Bank of England lends to the discount houses, which effectively controls the interest rates charged throughout the banking system
3. statistics
the average number of times an event occurs divided by the average number of times on which it might occur