Rejaul Karim Byron

The government may increase its allocation for incentive expenses for remittance in the next fiscal year as it looks to retain the surge of the flow of the cheapest source of foreign currencies for Bangladesh.

The government plans to set an ambitious target of using foreign aid worth Tk 88,024 crore for development projects in the next fiscal year as external assistance has piled up.

The government faces a challenge in reaching the target population in need of financial assistance amid the Covid pandemic in the absence of a comprehensive database of poor people.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has downsized its projection about the Bangladesh’s GDP growth in the current fiscal year of 2020-21, considering the second wave of Covid pandemic and fresh lockdown that restricted economic activities.

Over the last couple of weeks, Abdus Sobhan, a day labourer in the capital, saw his earnings drop to almost nothing.

Ten months ago, a government-commissioned research report on the fallout of the pandemic-induced shutdown divulged some grim projections: over 1.64 crore people in the country would become new poor in the second quarter of 2020.

The government has revised down the GDP growth projection to 6.1 per cent for 2020-21, the second revision this fiscal year, reflecting the devastating impacts of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic on the battered economy.

The government has already provided seasonal assistance to about 10 lakh people living below the poverty line and will expand such social protection programmes to curb the adverse effects of any future economic shock, according to Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal.

Relocation of the hazardous chemical warehouses from old Dhaka is still a far cry since the government failed to accomplish any of the goals set after the devastating fires in the past decade.

With only around 4.62 lakh tonnes of grains in the public food stocks, one of the lowest in years, the government has moved to procure paddy, rice and wheat from local farmers and millers at prices higher than last year’s.

The first nine months of the current fiscal year of 2020-21 saw slow implementation of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) with only 41.92 per cent of the total outlay spent till March while development spending declined 3.27 per cent year-on-year.

The health services division utilised only 21 percent of their allocations from the Annual Development Programme in the last nine months, said a report of the implementation, monitoring and evaluation division of the planning ministry.

The government is going to provide another round of cash assistance to nearly 35 lakh poor families facing income losses and hardship amid the ongoing nationwide lockdown.

The World Bank has agreed to provide $500 million to Bangladesh in additional financing to buy Covid-19 vaccines, but set some conditions regarding the procurement of the shots.

The Covid-19 pandemic has reversed Bangladesh’s steady trend of poverty reduction which had continued over the past two decades, according to a new report of the World Bank.

Economists have suggested that the government open a hotline service through which ultra-poor people facing food crisis during “lockdown” can communicate their sufferings and the government can take prompt steps to get food to them.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday indicated that the government may consider reducing corporate tax rates for listed firms in the upcoming budget.

Solar home systems (SHS) saved Bangladesh $1,852 million while providing clean energy for the past 15 years since 2003, says a World Bank survey.

Despite taking aggressive measures to import rice in the last three months, the government has so far failed to replenish the country’s depleting grain stocks.

The International Monetary Fund has raised its projection for the economic growth of Bangladesh to 5 per cent for 2021, up from 4.4 per cent it forecast in October.