Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)– The central bank of Bangladesh is going to unveil a balanced monetary policy aiming to keep the prices stable and create employment opportunities through an inclusive economic growth, officials said.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Atiur Rahman will announce the second half-yearly (January-June) monetary policy statement (MPS) for the ongoing financial year (FY) 2012-13 on Thursday to help productive sectors achieve such economic growth.
“We need to balance the support for overall economic growth with price and external sector stability,” a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) told the BBN in Dhaka on Wednesday.
He also said the central bank is giving top priority to curbing inflation and helping the productive sectors achieve maximum economic growth.
The central bank has already projected that the country’s overall economic growth will be between 6.1-6.4 per cent by the end of the ongoing FY ‘13.
“The new monetary policy is expected to have the room to support even higher growth if external circumstances and infrastructure bottlenecks improve,” the BB official said.
There is no alternative to curbing inflationary pressure on the economy for achieving sustainable economic growth, the central banker said while explaining the main objective of the new monetary policy.
The country’s inflation as measured by the consumers’ price index (CPI) moved slightly in the month of December 2012 on point-to-point basis mainly because of increase in prices of food items.
The inflation rate moved up to 7.69 per cent in December last from 7.41 per cent of the previous month on point-to-point basis, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) data.
On the other hand, the inflation rate came down to 8.74 per cent on annual average basis in December from 8.98 per cent in November 2012.
“Bringing inflation down to 7.5 per cent by the end of the FY ‘13 remains an important objective and the current trends suggest it is attainable,” the BB official said without elaborating.
Talking to the FE, another BB official said strengthening monetary transmission mechanism and intensifying bank supervision so that the commercial banks make effective use of the sizeable space for private sector credit growth may get even more emphasis in the new MPS.
BBN/SSR/AD-30Jan13-10:02 pm (BST)
