Dr Sadiq Ahmed joins BB monetary policy committee
The Bangladesh Bank has appointed economist Dr Sadiq Ahmed, vice chairman of the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, to its monetary policy committee.
This was announced in an internal letter from the central bank on Tuesday.
Earlier, on 22 October, the central bank restructured its 7-member monetary policy committee at a board meeting.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
In the new format, a committee of seven members, including four from the central bank, including the governor, and three from outside, was formed. However, at the meeting that day, several names were proposed as economists. Dr Sadiq Ahmed was appointed among them.
The chairman of the committee will be the governor of the central bank. In addition, there will be three more members from BB – its chief economist, deputy governor of the Monetary Policy Department, and executive director of the Monetary Policy Department.
The three other members from outside the central bank are—the chairman of the Economics Department of Dhaka University, the director general of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), and economist Dr Sadiq Ahmed.
Earlier, the central bank's monetary policy was 8-member. All of its members were from the central bank.
The letter said that the director of the Monetary Policy Department will be the secretary of the committee. At the same time, this department will perform all the official work of the committee.
The central bank currently announces monetary policy once every six months. Before announcing the policy, there are several meetings of the monetary policy committee. The monetary policy for the upcoming fiscal 2023-24 (January-June) will be through the new committee.
A senior official of the central bank said, "The central bank's monetary policy committee has been informal so far. As a result, it has been facing criticism for failing to control inflation. Therefore, the central bank has now formed an institutional mechanism to formulate monetary policy. The central bank's goal is to bring inflation down to 8% by December."
