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The Financial Express

Central bank revises credit growth targets for second half

Projection for govt borrowing at 31.7pc, for private sector at 14.8pc


| Updated: February 05, 2021 10:31:01


Central bank revises credit growth targets for second half

Bangladesh Bank (BB) has projected the government's borrowing at 31.7 per cent in the revised the monetary policy programmes for the second half (H2) of the current fiscal year (FY).

The growth in public sector credit until December 2020 was 17.2 per cent (net), according to a statement issued on Tuesday.

The central bank also revised upward the private sector credit growth target at 14.8 per cent, much lower than the one projected earlier. The private credit growth was just 8.4 per cent at the end of December last.

The total domestic credit growth has been adjusted upward at 17.4 per cent from the actual growth of 9.7 per cent until December 2020.

The revisions will not, however, prevent the BB from pursuing the ongoing expansionary monetary policy until June next, said the statement.

It added that the BB has adjusted some programmes upwards and some downwards, and kept some measures unchanged in the wake of emerging developments emerged in the money market.

It revised down the target of net foreign assets or NFA at 20.1 per cent until June 2021 instead of 30.8 per cent set for December, 2020.

The NFA has surged in recent months due to the higher remittance inflow and slow import payments, said the statement.

The central bank made an upward adjustment of net domestic assets at 13.6 per cent from December's actual growth of 9.8 per cent.

The broad money supply has been estimated at 15.0 per cent, up by 0.7 percentage point than the actual growth in December 2020.

The reserve money or the currency in circulation, the banks' deposit with the central bank and the other deposits with the central kept unchanged at 13.5 per cent.

The growth of the reserve money was 21.3 per cent in December 2020 (actual).

The BB said the GDP projection by the government also has been revised down to 7.4 per cent for the current fiscal year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The original target announced in the budget speech was 8.2 per cent.

The statement said the central bank has decided to continue the expansionary monetary policy for the H2 of the FY 2020-21 considering the money market and macroeconomic situations.

The decisions were taken at a meeting of the monetary policy committee (MPC) held at the Bangladesh Bank (BB) headquarters in Dhaka on Sunday, with BB Governor Fazle Kabir in the chair.

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