The government will focus on the top nine areas in the next budget as country is well on its way to recover from Covid-19 pandemic-led economic crisis.
The Ministry of Finance has already started the work of preparing the proposed budget for the fiscal year 2021-22.
The government is emphasizing not to reduce the expenditure, but to find an alternative way of income in the new budget.
A Finance Ministry official told Bangladesh Post, “The government is preparing new budget for emphasizing on top nine priority areas to ensure sustainable growth in consideration of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
The priority areas include; ensuring that the government allocates the necessary funds to priority sectors to combat the global epidemic of coronavirus, successful implementation of incentive packages announced by the Prime Minister to address Covid-19, provide additional allocations, incentives and compensation to the health sector under the control of Covid-19.
Besides, the government has also given priority to continue agricultural mechanization, irrigation and seed incentives, agricultural rehabilitation, fertilizer subsidy to increase food production, undertaking extensive employment and rural development projects.
Expanding the scope of social security activities, implementation of housing (main activities of Mujib Year) activities for the homeless poor, introduce free or low-cost food distribution among low income people and overall human resource development including education and skills development also have been given emphasis on next budget.
The finance ministry is going to propose a huge budget of almost Tk six lakh crore for the next fiscal for boosting the economy and creating huge employments.
Another high official of the finance ministry told Bangladesh Post on condition of anonymity, “We are keeping the reality in mind in the preparation of the next budget. The next budget will be the budget for the recovery of slowed down economy.”
“Since we are getting the vaccine, we hope that the economy will return to its normal as experienced in the past with the implementation of budget. However, it may take time until June to finalize the budget,” he mentioned.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal will present the new budget in the parliament on the first Thursday of the first week of June this year. However, the government has not yet finalized the process of presentation of the budget.
In this context, Finance Minister A H M Mustafa Kamal told the media, “Life cannot stay at a stand-still by the influence of Corona. The goal must be reached by tackling everything. Many of the government's priority projects will be completed next year.”
He said the concerned department will be more active in implementing the revenue collection program as per the set targets for next budget.
The finance minister said, “The new budget of the government will include guidelines, programs and necessary allocations to ensure employment of the people.”
“The new budget will also have proposals to attract domestic and foreign investment,” he said adding that in short, the new budget for the fiscal year 2021-2022 will be formulated according to the government's eighth five-year plan.
According to sources, the budget for the next fiscal year may be increased by Tk 32,000 crore to almost Tk 6,00,000 crore.
The size of the budget for the current fiscal year 2020-21 was fixed at Tk 5,68,000 crore.
Due to Corona, the revenue collection situation in the current financial year is not good. The government is looking for new ways to increase revenue earnings.
If the situation continues, the revenue deficit of Tk 85,000 crore in the last financial year may have to be increased by the end of the current financial year.
Despite all this, the finance ministry is estimating a huge target of Tk 350,000 crore for the NBR in the next budget, up Tk 20,000 crore from the current fiscal year amounting to Tk 3,30,000 crore.
In the next fiscal year, the deficit against huge expenditure and income may exceed six percent.
However, the government tries to keep deficit within five percent. In the next budget, it is planned to keep inflation at a tolerable level of 5.5 percent. Meanwhile, the GDP’s growth target for the next financial year has been set at 7.7 percent.
