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Bangladesh

Bangladesh to move from fixed ceiling to Interest Rate Corridor System

  • The governor of BB has informed that they are working on to introduce an interest rate corridor system for lending

  • The corridor system implies the central bank will develop and publish a market-based reference rate

  • Adoption of an interest rate corridor system by July 2023 is one of the targets for the IMF’s USD 4.7bn loan

Shopnil Paul
Shopnil Paul

Research Associate

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IDLC Securities
13 March 2023
Published byIDLC Securities

The governor of Bangladesh’s central bank (Bangladesh Bank) has informed that they are working on to introduce an interest rate corridor system for lending and move from the prevailing fixed cap.

The corridor system implies the central bank will develop and publish a market-based reference rate and based on the reference rate a band for lending rate may be set. However, we are yet to get any details in this regard.

Please note, adoption of an interest rate corridor system by July 2023 is one of the Structural Benchmarks (SB) targets for the IMF’s recently sanctioned USD 4.7bn loan to Bangladesh. The central bank has also committed to IMF that they will phase out all caps over the program period (by FY2026) and adopt ‘policy interest rate as an operational target’.

Table 01: The Prevailing Interest Rate Caps

The timeline:

  • April 01, 2020: Interest rate on all loans except credit cards capped at 9.0%.

  • October 01, 2020: Interest rate on credit cards capped at 20.0%.

  • January 15, 2023: In Monetary Policy Statement for H2 FY2023, the central bank removed the cap on credit cards and increased the ceiling on consumer lending rate to 12.0% from the previously imposed 9.0% cap.

Figure 01: The Interest Rate Spread of Banks before and after Rate Cap