Bangladesh's overall inflation eases to 7.44% in February

Bangladesh's overall inflation in February this year slightly eased compared to the previous month and stood at 7.44 percent, an official said Thursday. The Bureau of Statistics (BBS) official told Xinhua that the country's point-to-point inflation reached 7.50 percent in January this year, which was recorded at 7.84 percent in February last year. Officials say overall inflation eased despite prices of food and nonfood items soared slightly in the last month. The BBS data showed the country's food inflation rose to 8.84 percent. On the other hand, Bangladesh's non-food inflation was 6.37 percent in February this year against 5.53 percent in January, it showed. Unveiling inflation data, BBS Director General Golam Mostafa Kamal told journalists that the overall inflation has eased as political stability has returned to the country. "If this trend continues, the government could rein in inflation and keep it within the target it had earlier set," he said. The central bank of Bangladesh in January rolled out its monetary policy for the second half of the current 2013-14 fiscal year (July 2013-June 2014), and set targets to contain inflation and maintain growth momentum. According to the Monetary Policy Statement (MPS), the persisting inflationary pressures over the past few months with the risks ahead related to the inflation outlook imply that achieving the 2013-14 fiscal year inflation target will be challenging. The 2013-14 fiscal year inflation target announced in the budget in June last year is 7.0 percent, said the MPS. He added that reducing average inflation from its current 7.5 percent level may prove challenging especially as aggregate demand is likely to pick up in 2013-14 fiscal year and the recent rise in Indian inflation is also a risk for Bangladesh as shown by historical long term trends.