Bangladesh Bank has kept the policy rates unchanged to control inflation and increase remittance in the monetary policy statement (MPS) for the first half of the current fiscal year.

It has lowered the credit growth targets for both private and public sectors and recommended adjustment of interest rates of banks and national saving certificates (NSC).

 BB Governor Falze Kabir unveiled the MPS at the head office of the central bank in the capital on Wednesday when he expressed the authorities’ concern over the fall in remittance and higher interest rates of NSC.

 Referring to the decline in government’s borrowing from the banking sources by 16.2 percent in the last FY and greater dependence on saving instruments, he said the high interest on saving certificates will increase burden on the government.

 The policy statement has cut target of overall credit growth to 15.8 percent for the July-December period of the current FY from last half year’s target of 16.5 percent and achievement of 16.1 percent.

 The governor said a major focus of the policy statement is to check inflation.

 “We’re experiencing uptrend in food price mostly caused by the recent flashflood... The inflation came down to 5.44 at end of the last FY from 5.80 percent in the previous FY.

The central bank has set a target to keep the figure below 5.5 percent in FY 18,” Fazle Kabir said.

 Bangladesh Bank has decided to maintain policy rates unchanged at its current level with repo rate keeping at 6.75 percent and reverse repo at 4.75 percent.

 Repo rate is the rate at which the central bank lends against government securities and reverse repo rate is the rate at which the central bank borrows money from commercial banks within the country.

 “The central bank’s policy interest rates will continue to remain unchanged at the current levels due to the increase in food inflation and downward trend of remittance inflow,” said Fazle Kabir.

 The central bank in the new MPS has set the growth target at 16.3 percent for private sector credit and 12.1 percent for public sector credit.

 The governor highlighted the central bank’s role in the capital market.

 “BB closely monitors the operation of capital market subsidiaries of banks and has found that they operate within the statutory limit on the capital market exposures for their parent banks,” he said.

 In the MPS, the BB authorities expressed their concern over the increase in non-performing loans (NPLs).

  “For provisioning the NPLs, the banks make burden for the general borrowers. Elevated NPL constrain the transmission of any changes in the short term rates to the lending rates faced by the borrowers,” according to the statement.

 It expressed the hope that the continued supervision and corporate governance will lead to lower NPLs.

 The governor assured that the suspension of new law on value added tax will not negatively affect the implementation of MPS if revenue collection can maintain 19 percent growth.