The government plans to place a bigger budget with a target of achieving 8.2 percent GDP growth for the fiscal year 2020-2021 by creating huge employment opportunities.
A Finance Ministry official said that the government has taken many initiatives in the next budget to overcome the economic losses caused by Covid-19 pandemic.
Facing the ongoing and post Covid-19 pandemic situation, the national budget for the fiscal 2020-21 will create new employment opportunities in order to allow people to earn and live better in the crisis situation, he added.
After bouncing back from the COVID shocks, the GDP growth could return to its impressive trend as the government was expecting 8.2 percent expansion in the next fiscal, he mentioned.
Concerned about Covid-19 crisis, the government is planning to place the national budget to the tune of Tk568,000 crore for the fiscal year 2020-2021 with Tk 3,81,016 crore revenue collection target.
However, the budget deficit is projected to be Tk1,85,984 crore, which is 5.8 percent of the GDP that is going to cross the 5 percent benchmark after a decade.
The government has primarily set about Tk 82,421 crore borrowing target from banks, Tk 76,004 crore from foreign sources and the remaining from savings and others.
Besides, the rate of inflation is likely to be set at 5.4 percent for the next fiscal, in anticipation of a normal supply of commodities and a stable market.
Of the Tk523,190 crore national budget for the current fiscal year, the overall budget deficit was Tk145,380 crore, which is 5 percent of the GDP.
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen told Bangladesh Post, “The government’s focus is on ‘job creation’ in the upcoming budget due to the coronavirus pandemic.”
He also proposed structural reforms in the tax system to improve revenue collection during the time of global crisis.
“Our emphasis should be on job creation for home and abroad,” he said adding that, “Because of the pandemic many of our 12.3 million expatriate labour force working abroad may be forced to return home.”
“More importantly each year we are able to send 600,000 young people for job which may be affected due to the pandemic,” he said.
“The pandemic triggers global crisis particularly in the job market as businesses have been shut down due to worldwide lockdown,” he added.
Former governor of Bangladesh Bank Dr Atiur Rahman said, "Health expenditure must get the top priority in the upcoming budget, followed by investment in agriculture."
He also said the health sector should get 20 percent share of the total budget for next three years (currently it has less than 5 percent).
Rahman said, “This additional allocation will be required to prepare the health infrastructure to cope with the pandemic, as well as to continue other critical health services.”
He further said, “Share of the social safety net allocations in the total annual budget needs to be doubled, from 10 percent of the total budget to 20 percent, in order to safeguard the poor from socio-economic shocks caused by the pandemic.”
He urged the government to focus on agriculture sector more to ensure food security.
“Without efficient implementation and managing of the budget effectively, all works will go in vain,” he said adding that, the government must continue dialogues and cooperation with the private sector, the non-government organisations and the international development partners for reviving the economy.
In the next budget, the National Board of Revenue (NBR), country’s central authority for tax administration, has set the revenue collection target at Tk 3,30,000 crore in the upcoming fiscal 2020-21.
The main target of NBR in the current fiscal year was 3,25,600 crore.
This target has been reduced to Tk 3,00,500 crore due to non-collection of revenue at the desired rate.
Experts said while the huge amount of revenue collection in the outgoing year remains unrealized, the next fiscal’s revenue collection target will be ambitious one as Covid-19 pandemic has already affected the country’s economic activities.
Former NBR chairman Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said that the NBR was never targeted to collect revenue according to its capacity.
It is not thought how much revenue can be collected in reality, he mentioned.
The size of the budget is adjusted according to the government's development plan, he said adding that, the main goal of the NBR is to provide big portion of budget money.
