The central bank is going to roll out its half-yearly (July-December) monetary policy without making any projection about inflation during the period.
The policy scheduled to be announced sometime next week by Bangladesh Bank governor Salehuddin Ahmed, however, would have the basic objective of achieving 6.5 per cent growth by the end of this fiscal keeping inflationary pressure under control.
In all the last five half-yearly monetary policy statements, the central bank had made projections about inflation. Because of the ongoing price volatility, the bank has decided to skip the item this time, sources said.
"The new monetary policy is designed to curb inflationary pressures on economy and create employment opportunities, which, will help to increase the purchasing power of the people," a BB senior official told the FE.
He also said the monetary policy will focus on emerging sectors like ship breaking industry to help create new jobs as well as increase export earnings.
"The new monetary policy will help achieve annual real gross domestic product (GDP) at 6.5 per cent for the current fiscal and it will also keep the inflation under control," another BB official claimed.
They said that the credit flow will be maintained as per requirements of the real sectors, including agriculture and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The present monetary policy, effective until tomorrow (Thursday), has projected the average CPI inflation in the range of 8.0 to 8.2 per cent for the immediate past fiscal (2007-08).
It had also projected that the average food inflation would remain between 9.1 per cent and 9.3 per cent and the non-food inflation between 6.4 per cent and 6.6 per cent during FY08.
"The CPI inflation is now very much volatile so that we will not project the inflation. But we will employ our all efforts to curb the inflationary pressures on the economy," a BB official said.
The country's overall CPI inflation stood at 7.44 per cent on a point-to-point basis in May last from 7.66 per cent in April 2008 because of declining the prices of both food and non-food items, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
The inflation rate also came down to 9.87 per cent in May last from 9.94 cent of the previous month on an annual average basis.
The rate of inflation concerning food items stood at 9.62 per cent in May from 9.82 per cent in April last on a point-to-point basis while non-food items came down to 3.89 per cent from 4.16 per cent, the data showed.
On January 10 last, the BB announced its fifth monetary policy aiming to achieve maximum growth through expansion of credit to real sectors for fiscal year 2007-08 and keep inflationary pressures under control.
