Economy Desk: In March this year, private sector credit growth increased to 10.49 percent, which is the highest in the last 9 months. According to central bank data, private sector credit growth was 9.96 percent in February, which increased by 0.53 basis points in March compared to February. Meanwhile, the central bank has targeted credit growth at 10 percent for the January–June period of the current financial year 2023–24. However, although the first two months were within the target, credit growth exceeded the target in March. Bankers said private loans are increasing due to an increase in imports and business transactions on the occasion of Ramadan and Eid-ul-Fitr.
Bankers said that the import of food products increased due to Ramadan in March. Besides, the amount of consumer loans has also increased at the customer level in view of Ramadan Eid. Above all, due to these reasons, the growth of private sector credit increased slightly.
However, the growth of Eid-centered loans increased, but later in April, it decreased slightly. Because the country’s economy and the global market are slowing down, businessmen are reducing new business expansion. They said that the interest rate on the loan has increased from 9 taka per month to about 1 taka per month from last July to about 14 taka now. Traders are cutting imports due to higher interest rates as well as higher import settlement rates compared to the announced dollar rate, which has led to higher private debt in the past few months. In March 2023, the opening of import LCs fell below six billion dollars. Only three times in the past year has the import LC exceeded six billion dollars.
A senior official of a private bank said that although the dollar crisis continues, the situation has improved recently. He said that in recent months, exports have crossed five billion dollars a month, and remittance flows have also strengthened. At the same time, the liquidity situation of the dollar in the banking sector has also improved. As a result, before
Banks are now also considering opening import LCs for those products where LCs were not being opened. According to the data from the central bank, the growth of private loans in January 2023 was 12.62 percent. Since then, credit growth has declined consistently until September. However, it increased slightly to 10.09 percent in October. Then it decreased again in November. However, there was marginal growth in December compared to November. Growth was below the central bank’s target in January and February 2024. It increased in March. Bankers said that this is happening due to the significant increase in loan interest rates and the effect of the contractual monitoring policy.
In ongoing monetary policy, central banks reduce all types of money supply or lending targets. The private sector credit growth target was cut to 10 percent for June from 11 percent earlier. Besides, the overall money supply target has been reduced from 10 percent to 9.7 percent.
