Here are the latest updates on proposed budget for fiscal 2024-25

The meeting was presided over by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the cabinet room of the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban

Finance Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali will place the national budget for the fiscal year (2024-2025) at the Jatiya Sangsad this afternoon

Finance Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali is going to unveil his as well as the new government’s first budget today. 

It’s not the best of times. It’s not the season of light. The future will tell whether it’s the period of Dickensian despair on the economic front. But this is not the moment for business as usual, for sure.

The government will rely more on domestic bank borrowing than foreign financing in the next fiscal year, intensifying pressure on the economy.

The economy has been in a rough patch since 2022 like never before in the past decade and a half

Every media outlet is already flooded with news about the annual budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year to be placed at the parliament tomorrow

For air conditioner and refrigerator manufacturing industries, the government plans to extend the existing facility to June 2026, according to the finance ministry.

With an aim to restore macroeconomic stability, reduce inflation, and contain pressure on foreign currency reserves, Finance Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali is going to place a Tk 7,96,900 crore budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year tomorrow.

The subsidies and incentive expenditures in the upcoming budget are going to be more than that of the current fiscal year.

Businesspeople in Bangladesh have called for improving the ease of doing business and reducing the cost of production to establish a conducive trade and investment ecosystem.

The national budget for the fiscal year of 2024-25 is going to be presented in parliament on Thursday with monumental tasks ahead for the government to collect more revenues and contain stubbornly high inflation.

The government has not addressed the stability issue through its fiscal policy for two years in a row although the economy is in turmoil owing to both external and internal pressures. A noted economist, however, thinks it can bring the situation under better control through the budget in the next fiscal year beginning on July 1.

Actual budgetary expenditure

Fighting raging inflation and putting the economy back on track have not been taken seriously as evidenced from the government’s delayed response, which set the scene for one of the worst economic crises in its history and an unprecedented prolonged period of higher consumer prices, said an economist. 

The government is not moving at full throttle in bringing discipline to the banking sector, implementing reforms wholeheartedly, taking measures against syndication, and bringing money launderers under the rule of law, said a top economist.

The government is expanding the size of the national budget every year. However, it has fallen short of attaining its targets over the years, be that in terms of revenue collection or development expenditure.

In FY22, the spending on public services increased to 15 percent of the total actual expenditure, nearly double the rate in FY09. Similarly, spending on the transport and communication sector surged to 12 percent from 4.7 percent in FY09.

The government is thinking about allowing again undisclosed money to be legalised and laundered money to be brought back home through formal channels in the next budget.