The key priority of the Bangladesh Bank will be to control inflation, said Ahsan H Mansur, the new governor of the central bank.
High inflation and the foreign exchange reserve crisis are the two “headline challenges” for the economy, according to Mansur.
“And Bangladesh Bank’s central responsibility is to control inflation,” he said at a media briefing on the first day in his office today.
Mansur, an economist who worked at the International Monetary Fund for about three decades, replaced Abdur Rouf Talukder who resigned last week amid protests.
“We have to try to bring down the inflation rate as well as increase the level of foreign exchange reserves,” Mansur said.
The twin crises will not go away fully within a year but the highest efforts will be initiated to “normalise the situation as soon as possible”.
“I’ll try to bring transparency to the system and help the markets with data and qualitative information,” he said.
Mansur also spoke on governance failures in the banking sector, one of the beleaguered areas of the economy.
“The central bank has a moral responsibility for banking governance as it’s the custodian of the sector,” he said.
