The government is likely to fail to implement its national budget fully in the ongoing fiscal year owing to policymakers’ over-optimism and a lack of capacity of public agencies.

Amidst the steep rise in commodity prices, and a sky-high aspiration of sustaining GDP growth, what are the major challenges of creating an effective budget for Bangladesh this year? What should we look for from the FY 23-24 budget?

Bangladesh’s economy has been growing at an average 6 per cent annually for the last two decades. Yet the country has witnessed a spike in income and consumption inequality.

State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid told parliament today that the government does not directly give any subsidy to fuel oil..In reply to a query from AL MP Haji Selim, the state minister said BPC incurred a loss of about Tk 2,705 crore in 2021-22 fiscal, fo

The budget for the 2023-24 fiscal will be passed in parliament on June 26 while the Finance Bill will be passed on June 25

Bangladesh has so far had 52 national budgets, stretching back to the first one in the 1972-73 fiscal year. Watch this video for a recap of the changes the annual national budget underwent over the years.

Just a year ago, Aminur Rahman, a private sector employee living in Dhaka, could buy a moderate amount of essential goods, including rice, soybean oil, onions, salt and eggs, at Tk 553 from stores in Dhaka city

Says economist MM Akash

Says economist Zahid Hussain 

Says Sanem Executive Director Selim Raihan

In June last year when Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal placed the budget in parliament, inflation had already been creeping up and the foreign currency reserves were on the decline. These two had derailed the full economic recovery from a two-year crisis wrought by the Covid pandemic.

Says DCCI chief Sameer Sattar

Sharper, flexible and timely coordination among fiscal, monetary and trade policies of Bangladesh will yield improved stabilisation outcomes, said Debapriya Bhattacharya, a distinguished fellow of the Centre for Policy Dialogue.

Bangladesh is enjoying a big rise in overall agricultural production as it had increased public expenditure on the sector in the outgoing fiscal year of 2022-23, said Ahsan Khan Chowdhury, chairman and chief executive officer of Pran-RFL Group. 

The upcoming budget should target containing inflationary pressure to provide much-needed relief to consumers and be business-friendly to help the business community overcome the crisis stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war, said a number of businessmen and economists yesterday.

What is the national budget? What is the history of the budget? Since when did the government start using the budget as a tool to manage the income and expenditure of a country and provide funds for development expenditures? And how did Bangladesh's budget increase to this existing volume?

The health ministry continues to struggle with utilisation of funds allocated in the national budget, like it did in the past few years.

The macroeconomic stability that Bangladesh's economy has enjoyed for a long time has disappeared in the face of multiple challenges – from both external and domestic sources.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has become the first multilateral lender to respond to Bangladesh’s call for budget support this fiscal year to weather the impacts of the Ukraine war after its board approved $250 million last week.

As an average millennial, what does the budget really mean to you? Terms, technicalities and jargon from the 343 chapters of the proposed budget are enough to send an average desk jockey into a tortuous-fuelled death spiral of confusion. This is why most reluctant millennials with no savings, or the capability to afford to own a home, remain unfazed by such fiscal highlights of the year. Unless, it disrupts the few pleasures they have in life.