Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)- The central bank of Bangladesh is going to unveil its second half-yearly (H2) monetary policy on January 28 aiming to achieve maximum economic growth through curbing inflation, officials said.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr. Atiur Rahman will announce the next monetary policy at 11 am on Wednesday next, a BB senior official told BBN in Dhaka.
He also said the central bank is preparing the monetary policy maintaining a participatory process.
Under the process, the central bank earlier sought opinions from stakeholders including former finance advisers of the caretaker governments, former central bank governors and leading economists, experts and representatives of trade bodies for formulating the monetary policy.
“The new monetary policy was designed to give top priority to curb inflation and help the productive sectors for achieving maximum economic growth by the end of the ongoing fiscal year (FY) 2014-15,” another BB official said.
The central banker also said the BB wants to keep prices stable and create employment opportunities through boosting investment in the real sectors like agriculture and small and medium enterprises (SME).
“The central bank may continue the existing 'investment-friendly' and 'cautious' monetary policy for the next six months of the FY 15,” the BB official hinted.
The central bank is working to bring down inflation to 6.5 per cent by the end of this fiscal from the existing level of 6.99 per cent, according to the BB officials.
The country's inflation as measured by consumers' price index (CPI) eased slightly in the month of December last on both the point-to-point and 12-month average basis, mainly because of decrease in prices of food items.
The inflation rate came down to 6.11 per cent in December 2014 from 6.21 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 annual average inflation fell to 6.99 per cent in December last from 7.10 per cent of the previous month.
Meanwhile, credit growth to the private sector increased slightly in November last due to rising trade financing along with higher imports of capital machinery.
The private sector credit growth rose to 12.67 per cent in November, 2014 on a year-on-year basis from 12.12 per cent in October last. It was 11.15 per cent in September 2014.
The central bank has set the ceiling for private sector credit growth of 16.5 per cent including foreign borrowing while 14 per cent from local sources for the July-December period of the FY 15.
“The private sector credit growth target may increase in the second half of the FY 15,” another BB official hinted.
The first-ever monetary policy statement was formally published in January 2006 and the BB, the country’s central bank, declared that it would publish it on a half-yearly basis along with a half-yearly policy review.
BBN/SSR/AD-23Jan15-1:09 pm (BST)