<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">The Bangladesh Bank has revised down Bangladesh's economic growth target to 6.5 percent from 7.5 percent for the fiscal year 2023-24. While unveiling Bangladesh Bank's monetary policy statement (MPS), its Governor Abdur Rouf Talukder on Wednesday said in Dhaka that Bangladesh's economic outlook remains positive amid the economic challenges.</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">However, the Bangladesh Bank's  growth target revision came after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised down growth forecast for Bangladesh's economy to 6 percent from previous projection of 6.5 for the fiscal year 2023-24.</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">With the statement, the Bangladesh Bank has also increased its policy rate by 25 basis points to 8.0 per cent as part of its inflation-combating steps for the second half of the financial year 2023'24.</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">However, the central bank earlier said they had taken enough measures to tame inflation at 8% by December, the latest data from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics shows that inflation stood at 9.41% in the month.</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">Talukder said that the dynamic fuel prices amidst instability in the Middle East, volatilities in prices of essential commodities in global markets, reducing inflation at a tolerable level, stressed forex and non performing loans are the major challenges for the economy.</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #222222;">The central bank adopting a contractionary monetary policy stance also lowered the target for private sector credit growth to 10 per cent from 11 per cent.  </span></p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br />''</p>''<p style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #222222;">The Bangladesh Bank also announced the introduction of a new exchange rate mechanism named the crawling peg. It is a system of exchange rate adjustments in which a currency with a fixed exchange rate is allowed to fluctuate within a band of rates.</span></p>