Economy Desk: Bangladesh Bank will announce a new monetary policy today, giving priority to the strategy to overcome the ongoing economic crisis.
Central Bank Governor Abdur Rauf Talukder will announce the new monetary policy for the January-June period on Wednesday (January 17) at 3 p.m.
Controlling inflation will be one of the goals of this monetary policy. Bangladesh Bank tries to protect the economic development and stability of the country by announcing its monetary policy twice a year. According to Central Bank sources, the draft monetary policy was approved at the board meeting of the Central Bank at the beginning of this week. This monetary policy is being announced at a time of a dollar crisis and high inflation. This time too, there is a plan to increase the policy interest rate to make the rupee more expensive so that rising interest rates bring down inflation.
Other policies will continue as before. As the dollar crisis has not come to a bearable level, the foreign exchange rate is not being left to the market under this monetary policy. The governor has ordered the control of the dollar market in the ‘crawling peg’ method directed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Inflation control in the country is now one of the main tasks of the Bangladesh Bank. The central bank aimed to reduce inflation to 8 percent last December and to 6 percent by next June. Last October, inflation rose to 9.93 percent; at the end of November, overall inflation was 9.49 percent; in December, it stood at 9.41 percent. Bangladesh Bank has market-based loan interest rates to reduce inflation. Besides, the policy has also increased interest rates. The loan interest rate has increased from 9 percent to 11.89 percent. Meanwhile, the flow of credit to the private sector has come down due to the liquidity crisis and interest rates.
Last November, the growth in credit to the private sector was 9.90 percent. Bangladesh Bank had set a target of 10.9 percent growth in loans until December.
