Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal Thursday unveiled a Tk 603,681 crore national budget for 2021-22 fiscal year in the Jatiya Sangsad with major focus on the lives and livelihoods of the people.
The new budget themed as “Bangladesh towards a resilient future protecting lives and livelihoods” is 17.4 percent of the GDP and around 12 percent higher than the revised budget of the current fiscal, while 6.34 percent higher than the current fiscal’s original budget.
An ambitious 7.2 percent growth of the GDP has been targeted for the next fiscal.
“It will be easy to move the country forward by implementing a unified and inclusive development strategy with all stakeholders, including development and trade partners, the private sector and civil society,” Kamal said while presenting the third budget of the incumbent government.
He said the growth rate for 2021-2022 has been fixed at 7.2 percent in consistent with the government’s long-term plan and taking the post-Covid recovery situation into account. “It is expected that the inflation rate will be 5.3 per cent during the period.”
Total allocation in the revenue budget has been set at Tk 378,357 crore, while the allocation for the annual development program (ADP) is Tk 225,324 crore.
The total revenue collection target has been fixed at Tk 392,490 crore, of which Tk 330,078 crore will be raised by the National Board of Revenue (NBR), Tk 16,000 crore will by the non-NBR tax sources and the remaining Tk 43,000 crore will come from non-tax incomes of the government. Besides, Tk 3,490 crore will come from foreign aid, grants and loans.
The overall budget deficit for FY2021-22 will be Tk 214,681 crore, which is 6.2 percent of the GDP.
Total allocation for operating and other expenditures has been set at Tk 378,357 crore, while the allocation for the annual development program is Tk 225,324 crore.
“In the national budget, we usually formulate development plans in a coordinated manner by combining short, medium and long term action plans. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we do not have all kinds of data in front of us for this year,” he said.
He also said Bangladesh, under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, is moving ahead on the path of faster economic transition than other nations by overcoming the initial impact of COVID-19.
“But already a second wave and even a third wave have begun around the world, the impact of which is quite pronounced everywhere,” he said.
Therefore, he added, in tandem with development, the lives and livelihood of the marginalised people of the country are getting priority in the budget for next fiscal.
He said Bangladesh has reached a new height after its transition to a developing economy.
The Finance Minister said that Bangladesh’s sustained achievement of high GDP growth in the last decade has been halted temporarily due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Health, agriculture and employment generation have been given priority while allocating resources for the ADP.
Kamal said a number of plans have been undertaken to develop the health sector to address the impact of COVID-19. The implementation of some of these projects has begun in the current 2020-21 fiscal year and will continue in the next financial year.
“I would like to propose to allocate Tk 10,000 crore in the next fiscal year to meet the emergency requirements to respond to the pandemic,” he said.
In the ADP for 2021-22, Tk 66164 crore or 29.4 percent has proposed for human resources sectors (education, health and related others), Tk 48,808 crore or 21.7 per cent for the overall agriculture sector (agriculture, rural development and rural institutions, water resources and related others), Tk 27,367 crore or 12.1 percent for the power and energy sector, Tk 59,499 crore or 26.4 percent for communication (roads, railways, bridges and other communications related), and Tk 23, 486 crore or 10.4 percent for 33 other sectors.
Allocation proposed for the social infrastructure sector in the proposed budget is Tk 170,510 crore, in which allocation for human resources sector (education, health and other related sectors) will be Tk 155,847 crore.
Allocation proposed for the physical infrastructure sector will be Tk. 179,681 crore , in which Tk 74,102 crore will go to overall agriculture and rural development, Tk 69,474 crore to overall communications, and Tk 27,484 crore to power and energy.
A total of Tk 1,45,150 crore has been proposed for general services, which is 24.04 percent of the total allocation.
Tk 34,648 crore is proposed for public-private partnerships (PPP), financial assistance to different industries, subsidies, equity investments in state-owned, commercial and financial institutions, which is 5.74 percent of the total allocation.
Some Tk 68,589 crore for interest payment, which is 11.36 per cent of the total allocation, Tk 5,103 crore for net lending and other expenses, which is 0.85 per cent of the total allocation.
The Finance Minister said that Bangladesh’s sustained achievement of high GDP growth in the last decade halted temporarily due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even though it achieved a record 8.15 percent growth in FY2018-2019, it has slowed down to 5.2 per cent in FY2019-2020 due to the pandemic.
The GDP growth rate was originally estimated to be 8.20 per cent for FY2020-2021 on the assumptions that the economy would recover from the impact of the pandemic.
For creating employment for the more than two million new entrants, the Finance Minister put confidence on the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution has opened up the door to create unprecedented new employment opportunities for skilled manpower both for home and abroad.
