Economy improving

Business Report :
While Bangladesh Bank was seeing various challenges looming over the country’s economy, two ministers yesterday said the condition of the economy was improving.
“Due to the ongoing global crisis, the foreign exchange reserves are under pressure for legitimate reasons but we have gradually managed to deal with it,” Planning Minister MA Mannan said.
“The country seems to have handled the fluctuations of inflation well,” he said while delivering a speech at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC).
In its latest policy statement, Bangladesh Bank said the near-term economic outlook seemed to be quite stable but was critically dependent on three external issues.
Those were the length and intensity of the Russia-Ukraine war, interest rate hike spree by the Federal Reserve and the re-emergence of Covid-19 in China, it said.
The war created instability in the world market, which accelerated global inflation as well as that in Bangladesh, among other things, said Mannan.
He went on to say that inflation being on a downward trend for four consecutive months since August last year was particularly noticeable.
A bumper yield of the current Aman season paddy and the abundance of winter vegetables in the market have played a major role in controlling inflation, according to Mannan.