Bangladesh’s central bank will set up $500mn of funding for the country’s manufacturers, in an effort to stimulate economic growth, the head of the bank has said.
The money will be split between two funds, one aimed at manufacturing in general, the second at textiles, including export-oriented ready-made garment factories.
Garments are a key foreign-exchange earner for Bangladesh. The country’s low wages and duty-free access to Western markets have helped make it the world’s second-largest apparel exporter after China.
“Two new support windows will be opened,” central bank Governor Atiur Rahman said at a press conference to announce monetary policy for the coming fiscal year.
“The first is a $300mn World Bank-funded lending window in foreign exchange for manufacturing units and the second is a Bangladesh Bank funded $200mn window for refinancing in foreign exchange to export-oriented manufacturing units in the textiles, apparels and leather sectors,” he said.
Atiur said the funds were aimed at helping the Bangladesh economy grow 7% this fiscal year, which ends June 2016. The economy grew 6.5% last fiscal year.
Credit from the domestic banking system for the current fiscal year grew only 10.4% up to May 2015, Atiur said, compared with a projection of 17.4% for the entire fiscal year. He blamed inadequate infrastructure, tepid global output growth and political turmoil.
“Growth performance would clearly have been better had the economy not faced the disruptions from political unrest,” Atiur said.
Political conflict early in 2015 left more than 120 people dead, mostly from petrol-bomb attacks on vehicles. The unrest eased in April.
Some analysts say setting high targets for credit expansion is needed to stimulate the economy.