Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Monday hoped that the general point-to-point inflation rate by June this year would stand at 7.0 percent, down from 7.53 percent in December last year. He said he based his optimism on the normalization of the economic policy of most of the central banks of the developed world and impact of the favourable monetary policy announced by the Bangladesh Bank. The finance minister expressed this hope while placing in parliament the report on budget implementation progress for the 2nd quarter (July-December) of the current fiscal year 2013-14, the flow of income-expenditure and the macro-economic analysis. He said that the government is serious to keep the trend of inflation rate at tolerable level as the general point-to-point inflation rate came down below 8 percent in December last year down from 8.05 percent in June, 2013. Muhith mentioned that the food prices in the country did not decline to an expected rate due to the disruption of food supply following recent hartals and blockades enforced by the BNP-Jamaat. He, however, hoped that the food prices will fall. He said that the food prices in India and other countries have already started declining. – UNB
