Given Bangladesh's performance in Open Budget Survey 2023, there is room for improvement in the country's budget process.
Finance Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali will place the national budget for the fiscal year (2024-2025) at the Jatiya Sangsad this afternoon
The government has set a target to export goods and services worth $110 billion in the fiscal year of 2026-27, which is double the earnings recorded in the last financial year
This will be the first meeting of the council since the new government took office after the January 7 parliamentary elections. Thus, it is the maiden meeting for the new finance minister on the budget and the overall macroeconomic situation.
CPD Distinguished Fellow Debapriya Bhattacharya says
The measures taken in the proposed budget for the next fiscal year have failed to address the most difficult challenge of containing inflation, and as a result, the suffering of common people will increase further, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) said yesterday.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday said that though he is worried about the elevated level of consumer prices, the situation is still under the government’s control.
An underwhelming budget at a time of overwhelming crisis
The reserves stood at $29.91 billion today in contrast to $42.20 billion during the same period a year ago.
Says DCCI chief Sameer Sattar
Sharper, flexible and timely coordination among fiscal, monetary and trade policies of Bangladesh will yield improved stabilisation outcomes, said Debapriya Bhattacharya, a distinguished fellow of the Centre for Policy Dialogue.
Bangladesh is enjoying a big rise in overall agricultural production as it had increased public expenditure on the sector in the outgoing fiscal year of 2022-23, said Ahsan Khan Chowdhury, chairman and chief executive officer of Pran-RFL Group.
The upcoming budget should target containing inflationary pressure to provide much-needed relief to consumers and be business-friendly to help the business community overcome the crisis stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war, said a number of businessmen and economists yesterday.
What is the national budget? What is the history of the budget? Since when did the government start using the budget as a tool to manage the income and expenditure of a country and provide funds for development expenditures? And how did Bangladesh's budget increase to this existing volume?
The health ministry continues to struggle with utilisation of funds allocated in the national budget, like it did in the past few years.
The macroeconomic stability that Bangladesh's economy has enjoyed for a long time has disappeared in the face of multiple challenges – from both external and domestic sources.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has become the first multilateral lender to respond to Bangladesh’s call for budget support this fiscal year to weather the impacts of the Ukraine war after its board approved $250 million last week.
As an average millennial, what does the budget really mean to you? Terms, technicalities and jargon from the 343 chapters of the proposed budget are enough to send an average desk jockey into a tortuous-fuelled death spiral of confusion. This is why most reluctant millennials with no savings, or the capability to afford to own a home, remain unfazed by such fiscal highlights of the year. Unless, it disrupts the few pleasures they have in life.
If one looks at the inflationary measures that are proposed in the FY2022-23 budget, there are ample reasons to be frustrated.