The Bangladesh Economic Association (BEA) on Thursday placed a Tk 20.94 lakh crore budget proposal for the next fiscal year 2023-24.
BEA president AbulBarkat placed the proposal at a press conference held at its office in the capital.
The proposed budget of the BEA is around 2.70 times higher than the original national budget size of the current fiscal year which is Tk 6,03,681 crore or 17.5 percent of the GDP.
The proposed budget of the BEA is around 3 times higher than the original national budget size of the current fiscal year which is Tk 7,61,991 crore.
Barkat said, “Our budget is expansionary. We have heard that the size of the budget that the government is going to formulate in the next financial year is Tk 7.64 lakh crore. In that case, our budget is 2.7 times larger than that of the government.”
He said that the next budget has been prepared keeping in mind the increasing inflation, unbridled contraction of the labor market, the impact of the pandemic and the war in Europe.
He said that the majority of people in the country are multidimensionally poor.
“The number of rich and super rich is 1 percent. The number of multidimensional poor has more than doubled during the Covid-19 period. Prices of goods are increasing. On the other hand, without increasing the real wages, the suffering in public life has increased. Storage capacity is decreasing. People are breaking savings. Many are living in debt, forced to exclude non-vegetarian food from the menu.”
He said, full employment, healthy life for children, housing for all and prevention of price inflation - keeping these issues in mind, the Economic Society has formulated the budget.
The programme was moderated by the general secretary of Bangladesh Economic Association, MdAinul Islam.
In the press conference, BEA members and people from different classes remained connected through video conferencing.
However, the government is going to set about 7.50 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth target for the upcoming fiscal year 2023-24 (FY24), a Finance Ministry official said.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal is set to place in parliament the national budget amounting to about Tk 7,61,991 crore for fiscal year (2023-24) on June 1.
On the other hand, the government is to set a target to collect Tk 5,00,000 crore as revenue in the upcoming budget for 2023-24 fiscal year. Of the revenue collection target, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) will collect Tk 4,33,000 crore, up 16.20 percent or about Tk 63,000 crore over the previous fiscal amounting to Tk 3,70,000 crore and another Tk 67,000 crore will be collected from other sources.
The budget deficit is Tk 2,61,991 crore. The government has set a Tk 263,000 crore Annual Development Programme (ADP) for the next fiscal year (FY24) making the highest allocation of Tk 75,945 crore (28.88pc of allocation) in the transport and communication sector.