Bangladesh Bank has held its key policy repo rate steady at 10 percent for the first half of the current fiscal year, reaffirming its commitment to a tight monetary stance aimed at curbing persistent inflation, weak private investment, and growing uncertainty over global trade.
Diversifying Bangladesh’s export basket has been a high-priority policy objective for many years.
Some banks are simply non-viable and suffer from inherent governance problems.
There is ample evidence showing that both domestic and foreign direct investment (FDI) have a significant positive effect on economic growth.
The finance ministry has identified seven major challenges including tight monetary and fiscal policies, taken to tame elevated inflation levels for more than three years, in next fiscal year that may increase unemployment.
The estimate is almost close to the projection by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 3.8 percent for the year.
The silver lining is that the economy isn’t falling apart
The Bangladesh Bank will consider slashing the policy rate to 7 percent by March, provided that rampant inflation, which has hovered above 9 percent for nearly two years, eases to 5 percent by then, Governor Ahsan H Mansur said yesterday.
Bangladesh's agro-processed exports are already rising.
Outward remittances from Bangladesh through legal channels crossed the $100-million mark for the first time in 2021 as more foreigners are working in the fast-growing economy, data from a global organisation showed.
One could say the success story of Bangladesh’s economic development has been spectacular.
Bangladesh does not have too many policy options other than reducing consumption of goods and services and making the exchange rate flexible in order to ensure macroeconomic stability, said a central bank report.
Bangladesh's export sector showed its prowess in 2022 despite the devastating Russia-Ukraine war, unprecedented freight costs, energy crisis, record inflation and a risk of a recession that loomed throughout the outgoing year.
The government has trimmed its growth forecast for this fiscal year by a whole percentage point to 6.5 percent as the energy shortage and inflation dampened economic activities.
Though inflation continued to undergo a downward trend for a third consecutive month in November, non-food inflation in rural areas entered into double digits last month for the first time in recent times.
The government managed to implement 85 per cent of the budget in the last fiscal year despite spending a huge amount as subsidies and incentives, raising questions about the trend of unveiling bigger budgets year after year.
Bangladesh's foreign currency reserves fell below $34 billion today after the central bank sold $71 million in in the interbank market to help banks clear import bills, said a Bangladesh Bank official.
Many economists today believe we are committing one of the biggest economic blunders, which has brought ruin to countless past societies.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has become the first multilateral lender to respond to Bangladesh’s call for budget support this fiscal year to weather the impacts of the Ukraine war after its board approved $250 million last week.
