Rejaul Karim Byron

The government may once again offer scope for whitening black money through investment in industries to boost private investment, say finance ministry officials.

The government plans to bring in more people under its social safety net programme, including all disabled people, in the next budget as it looks to share the gains of the higher economic growth clocked in recent years with a larger section of the underprivileged in the society.

The government is planning to allocate Tk 100 crore to rehabilitate the victims of river erosion across the country.

The government is likely to whittle down value-added tax rates to five from existing seven as it is getting ready to implement the new VAT law from the next fiscal year, seven years after its enactment.

The government’s interest burden is likely to get heavier in the upcoming fiscal year thanks to its excessive reliance on high-cost national savings certificates to fund its expenditures.

The government is likely to take several steps for reviving the capital market and the real estate sector, including a cut in tax for flat purchase, in next fiscal year’s budget.

The government’s subsidy expen-diture is likely to soar 22.28 percent year-on-year to about Tk 45,000 crore next fiscal year as its

The government is going to allocate Tk 200 crore to pay a portion of the arrears of workers and officials of state-owned jute mills ahead of the Eid, officials said yesterday.

Bangladesh will sign a deal of over $1.2 billion with Japan for four projects, including the second metro rail connecting the capital’s airport and Kamalapur, during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to the East Asian country on May 28-31.

The government mulls over increasing the cash incentive for exports by one percentage point as it looks to motivate exporters to leverage the sudden opportunities presented by the US-China trade war. Currently, 26 sectors are provided with cash incentives ranging from 2 percent to 20 percent of their export

The long wait for thousands of teachers and employees of non-government educational institutions for MPO is likely to be over soon, as the government has decided to allocate Tk 1,150 crore for the pur-pose.

The government may give migrant workers a three percent cash incentive to encourage them to send remittance through official channels.

The government has allocated almost one-fourth of the development budget for fiscal 2019-20 to 14 mega projects with a view to

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi once said that growth that is not inclusive is not meaningful but just economic figures. And this proclamation seems to be gradually becoming relevant for Bangladesh.

The Daily Star was in Nadi, Fiji for the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank’s Board of Governors at the invitation of the Manila-based multilateral lender. During the five-day event, the newspaper’s senior reporter Rejaul Karim Byron sat down with Hun Kim, ADB’s director general for South Asian operations, for an interview. Kim is sanguine about Bangladesh’s future and affirmed the ADB’s continued support upon the country’s graduation to the middle-income bracket.

The government is set to fix the size of the development budget at Tk 202,721 crore for 2019-20, up 21.39 percent from the current fiscal year, as it looks to mobilise a higher amount of foreign aid piled up in the pipeline.

Bangladesh was the third highest recipient of loans from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) last year, in further testament to the

Asian Development Bank in developing its untapped sectors as it strives to become a developed nation by 2041.

Asian Development Bank’s strategy going forward will be to respond to the changing needs of the Asia and the Pacific region, says its President Takehiko Nakao.

In a word to the wise, ADB President Takehiko Nakao yesterday advised countries to scrupulously evaluate the merits of a project before approaching China for funding under its flagship Belt and Road Initiative.