Bangladesh Bank (BB) has again decided to formulate monetary policy twice a year as per the advice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The central bank in a meeting with economists on Monday took the decision. As part of this, the monetary policy will start formulation for the second half of the current fiscal year in January next year, Bangladesh Bank’s chief economist Habibur Rahman, told UNB on Tuesday.

“We have discussed various aspects of macroeconomics including money supply, reserve currency, and interest rates with all stakeholders including economists of the country. The current challenges of the economy were also discussed,” he added.

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As per the suggestion of the economists the central bank decided to formulate the monetary policy twice a year, he said.

Monetary policy was announced twice a year since 2006. In 2019, former governor Fazle Kabir announced monetary policy formulation once a year.

Accordingly, he announced the monetary policy for the fiscal year 2019-20 on July 31 of that year. The central bank announced monetary policy only once in the next financial year 2020-21 and 2021-22.

Recently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recommended announcing monetary policy four times a year as a condition of a getting $4.5 billion loan.

Officials said the central bank announces monetary policy based on the data published by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). And the statistics bureau publishes these data twice a year. As a result, Bangladesh Bank will announce the monetary policy twice a year.

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Bangladesh Bank will announce the monetary policy for the second half of the financial year in January.