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Monetary policy to stay accommodative

BB releases Monetary Policy Statement today

Rejaul Karim Byron and Md Fazlur Rahman
Bangladesh Bank is set to announce its monetary policy for the first half of the fiscal year today, with its accommodative stance likely to continue.
It might, however, increase the private sector credit growth target by 1 to 1.5 percentage points to help investment pick up and along the way steer the economy to the 7 percent growth trajectory.
Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur
Rahman will present the monetary policy statement (MPS) for the July-December period at a programme at his office.
The policy rates aimed at boosting investment would remain unchanged from the previous monetary policy, said an official of the central bank
The private sector credit growth target was set at 15.5 percent in the last monetary policy. It might be set at up to 17 percent in the next policy so that banks can lend more to the productive sectors, the official said.
As of May, the private sector credit growth was 13.57 percent. Although official figures for June were not available, he said it would cross 14 percent last month but would still remain below the central bank's ceiling.
The MPS will also give details on private sector borrowing from external sources as well as the central bank's $500 million refinance scheme.
Of the $500 million, $300 million will come from the World Bank and the central bank will provide the rest.
The interest of the loans to be provided from the refinance scheme and the eligibility criteria and eligible sectors would be outlined in the MPS.
Also, a projection would be given on external funds flowing into the country as loans to the private sector, the official said.
"Our intention is not to relax the policy, but to provide more options so productive sectors can access more funds, "hesaid.
The government comfortably met its inflation target in the just concluded fiscal year riding on depressed global commodity markets and prudent management of the monetary policy.
At the end of fiscal 2014-15, the average inflation stood at 6.41 percent -the lowest in 11 years - against the target of 6.5 percent.
However, core inflation is on the rise: it was 6.08 percent in January and reached 6.74 percent in June - a scenario that is
dictating the next monetary policy and stopping the central bank from announcing an expansionary one at the moment.
Core inflation represents the long-run trend of the price level. In measuring long-run inflation, the transitory price changes are excluded. One way of accomplishing this is by excluding items frequently subject to volatile prices, like food and energy.
Zahid Hussain, a lead economist of the World Bank's Dhaka office, earlier said it appears that the stability of inflation has continued and it is great news for the authors of the forthcoming MPS.
"The challenge for them is to ensure policy continuity on the inflation front. Perhaps time has come to think about nudging the economy towards a long-run rate ranging between 5 percent and 6 percent," he added. The government has set the inflation target at 6.2 percent for the current fiscal year.