Interest Rate Convergence in Bangladesh

Abstract

Financial liberalization, a widely-accepted policy paradigm since the 1980s, aims to remove financial repression and thus establish an efficient financial sector as a pre-requisite for financial development. Interest rate convergence is one of the obvious outcomes of the interest rate liberalization, a crucial part of financial liberalization. Uniformity of interest rate should be there in a free and competitive financial market. This paper examines the state of interest rate convergence by measuring the degree of convergence in the financial market of Bangladesh, a success case of financial liberalization initiated in the 1990s.

Keywords

• Financial sector reform programs
• Private commercial banks
• Nationalized commercial banks
• Foreign commercial banks
• Specialized banks
• Interest rate convergence