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Bangladesh Money Market Scenario and Outlook

Money market of Bangladesh has gone through some swift changes due to the backlash on the liquidity. Liquidity drag has been mainly occurred due to the extensive private sector credit growth keeping most of the banks’ advance deposit ratio (ADR) close to 85%. At least 12 commercial banks including the public banks have exceeded the existing ADR limit. Private sector credit growth was mainly fuelled by borrowers’ appetite for cheap fund and banks’ opportunity to generate profit. As a drive to squeeze the excessive private sector credit growth, Bangladesh Bank plans to curtail limit on advance-deposit ratio which will persuade banks to seek large deposits in short time. To pursue the objective, deposit rate needs to be attractive for all sorts of potential depositors. The impact is already apparent in the interest rates of banks. According to the industry participants, interest rate has gone up by around 1% already from October, 2017. Upward pressure on USD has also led to a critical scenario for retaining strong liquidity of BDT. Import of consumer goods has surged to a massive level due to shortage of food supply. Furthermore, import of capital machineries has also gone up as construction of large development projects are on the pipeline. Unless strong interference is initiated by Government, USD may escalate further and lead to squeezed liquidity. Interest rate is supposed to go up further in 2018.