The Bangladesh Economic Association (BEA) Monday proposed a Taka 11,95,486 crore alternate national budget for the next fiscal year (FY25).
BEA general secretary Dr Md Ainul Islam proposed this alternate budget at a press conference held at its office.
Dr Ainul said this alternate budget has been proposed in a bid to transform 70 to 80 percent majority population of the country into sustainable middle class by 2034.
He said if this proposed budget is implemented by the government, disparity will be removed as well as there will be poverty alleviation, ensuring of social security, reduction of inflation and improvement in the foreign currency reserve situation.
BEA president Dr Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad and immediate past president Dr Abu Barkat were present among others.
The BEA alternate budget proposals highlight that the government would have to explore many newer sources of revenue generation which were unexplored in the past or not utilized as per necessity.
These include property tax, tax on excess profit, tax collection from the recovered laundered money, undisclosed money and imposing tax on the foreign nationals.
The association also suggested for putting more emphasis on direct tax rather than indirect tax, keeping the poor, lower middle class and middle class people outside the tax net for the next couple of years.
Out of the total alternate budget size of Taka 11,95,486 crore, the BEA proposed for realizing Taka 10,24,767 core as revenue income which is 92.13 percent of the budget size. Out of the deficit budget size of Taka 1,70,719 crore, Taka 95,719 crore will come from the bond market, Taka 25,000 crore from the sales of savings certificates, Taka 50,000 crore from the public and private partnership.
There will be no role of local loans and foreign loans in financing the budget.
