Bangladesh minister claims inflation has come under control, defends data delay

Planning Minister MA Mannan has claimed inflation came under control in September after a rise in August, although the government has not published the consumer price data.

Speaking at the inauguration of training of post-census data collectors in Dhaka on Monday, Mannan said “administrative reasons” were behind the delay in publishing the inflation data for August. “We give the data honestly without doctoring or engineering them.”

“Unrestrained inflation has come under control in September. You’ll know how much within a day or two.”

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics generally publishes consumer price data in the first half of a month, but it did not release the data for August in September. Many analysts believe BBS’s inflation data is flawed and the key index is actually much higher than it is reported by the government agency.

As it did not publish the data for August, some suspected the index continued to increase sharply amid rising prices.

Mannan admitted inflation rose in August. “But it fell by a large margin in September. I strongly believe it will decrease further in October.”

Despite a rise in prices of fuel oil that drove up the cost of living, Mannan said inflation decreased in September because of the government programme under which 10 million families are receiving daily necessities, such as rice, lentil and cooking oil, at subsidised prices.

The minister hoped the cost-of-living crisis will ease with the downfall of inflation in future.