Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)- The central bank of Bangladesh unveiled the half-yearly accommodative monetary policy on Thursday aiming to maximise economic growth through enhanced investment particularly in productive sectors, officials said.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr Atiur Rahman announced the monetary policy statement (MPS) for the July-December period of the current fiscal year (FY) 2015-16 to help real sectors achieve sustainable economic growth with inflation held in healthy check.
“We’ve formulated the MPS with its top priority placed on curbing inflation and facilitating the productive sectors in achieving optimum economic growth by the end of the FY16,” a BB senior official told BBN in Dhaka.
He also said the central bank is now working to bring down the inflation to 6.2 per cent by the end of this fiscal from the existing level of 6.40 per cent in line with the government’s budgetary projection.
The inflation, as measured by consumers' price index (CPI), came down to 6.40 per cent in June 2015 on the basis of 12-month average from 6.46 per cent in the month of May last.
On the other hand, the inflation moved up to 6.25 per cent from 6.19 per cent on point-to-point basis, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) data.
However, core inflation boiled up to 6.74 per cent in June last from 6.37 per cent a month ago, as the key economic barometer gathered heat. It was 6.28 per cent in April 2015.
The central bank of Bangladesh is measuring the core inflation, which excludes non-food and non-fuel components, from the CPI.
Another BB official said the private-sector credit-growth target is likely to remain unchanged in the MPS for the first half of the fiscal in consideration of the country’s overall situation.
But the central bank may assure that the ceiling of private- sector credit growth would be enhanced in line with market requirement, the central banker explained.
The central bank had set the private-sector credit growth at 15.5 per cent by the end of June 2015.
Credits to the private sector grew to 13.57 per cent last May from 13.27per cent of the previous month, the BB data showed.
BBN/SSR/AD