The American Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh (AmCham) in a response to the proposed budget for the 2022-23 fiscal-years on Thursday made some recommendations to tackle post-pandemic twin challenges.
Since Bangladesh is poised to prepare itself for post pandemic recovery strategy as well as keeping up the momentum for the economy returning to double-digit growth amidst unpredictability of the geopolitical environment, we recommend to tackle the twin challenges focusing on crisis management, prioritising expenditures and Foreign Exchange Reserve, inflation control, infrastructure developments to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) as well as private sector, policy assistance and continuity to emphasise on key procedural matters in following notes:
● Agricultural allocation and Inflation Control: Since food safety ensures a moderate inflation amidst global phenomenon, we expect Agriculture to receive more incentives ensuring unchanged food production. We would appreciate more price reduction of Agricultural equipment and hybrid vehicle.
●Foreign Exchange Reserve: No significant economic growth is conceivable without a sustained Foreign Exchange reserve growth. Hence, instead of gross import ban, we should speed up the foreign-funded projects’ implementation and reconsider own funded projects having a sizeable import component.
● Employment Generation & Social Safety: Since informal sector employs more than 85% of the workforce, the government should increase allocation to these sectors including women & youth led micro small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), innovation and start-ups to counter poverty and income inequality by establishing a robust social safety net system.
● Corporate & Advance Income Tax: We appreciate the recent reduction of corporate tax; however, request the government to continue gradual reduction days ahead and that AIT adjustment and VAT should be withdrawn from industrial raw materials’ import to enhance domestic production capacity.
“AmCham believes budget execution is what matters in the end and that should be measured both for quantity and quality,” Syed Ershad Ahmed, President of AmCham, said in a statement.