The Bangladesh Bank is likely to announce its monetary policy statement or MPS for the second half of the ongoing financial year 2024-25 on January 27.
A senior official of the central bank confirmed the date and said, 鈥榃e have fixed a tentative date on January 27. But we can change the date for one or two days.鈥� 聽 聽 聽
The MPS for the second half of the current financial year is being formulated maintaining its 鈥榗ontractionary鈥� mood giving priority on inflation-combating, he added.
The MPS will be the first monetary policy to be announced by Ahsan H Mansur who became governor of the Bangladesh Bank following the political changeover on August 5 last year.
For formulating the MPS, the official said that the Monetary Policy Department of the central bank was holding meetings with internal and external stakeholders as well as economists.
Last week, they held meeting for the first time with stakeholders as well as economists in Chattogram, he added.
The central bank also held a discussion with the country鈥檚 leading research organisations recently at Lakeshore Hotel in Gulshan in the city on potential policy measures.
The organisations included the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh and South Asian Network on Economic Modelling.
The official said that the central bank committee forming the monetary policy would ultimately summarise the observations from various quarters regarding its goals and format, including measures for regulating currency and lending rates, before finalising it on January 20.
Then the board of directors of the Bangladesh Bank will approve the policy on January 22 and set a date for announcing it for implementation.
Inflation in Bangladesh has been hovering above 9 per cent since March 2023, with the central bank鈥檚 existing contractionary monetary policy yet to cool consumer prices.
The Bangladesh Bank has hiked the policy rate several times to 10 per cent since then. The policy rate is the interest rate at which commercial banks borrow from the central bank.
But in December of the just concluded calendar year, inflation had eased slightly to 10.89 per cent from 11.38 per cent the previous month, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
On July 18, 2024, the central bank unveiled the last MPS for the first half of FY25.
