BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir yesterday said the proposed budget completely failed to address how people's lives and livelihood can be protected amid the pandemic.

Since the government is not accountable to the people of the country, the people's welfare was ignored in the budget, he said while presenting BNP's formal reaction to the budget at the party chairperson's Gulshan office.

Fakhrul, who was once an economics teacher, said only an elected government could come up with a budget that reflects the people's hopes and aspirations.

"There is no direction on how people will be protected during the pandemic," Fakhrul said.

He added that the budget's tagline, "Bangladesh Towards a Resilient Future: Protecting Lives and Livelihoods", sounds good, but there is nothing specific for the poor people.

"Rather, we see an old-fashioned dependency on bank loans."

This budget has ignored the stimulus package for the poor that everyone expected.

There were so many discussions about the health sector, but allocation has been only around 1 percent of the GDP, he said, "It is painful. This allocation will not meet the demand of the health sector. The allocation should have been 5 percent of the GDP."

The government said 25 lakh vaccines will be administered each month. "But how this will be implemented is not mentioned in the proposed budget."

The small and medium entrepreneurs employ the largest number of people, but the incentives are for the industrialists, Fakrul said.

"The finance minister himself is a businessman. The middle class is frustrated but the business quarters are happy."