The first nine months of the current fiscal year of 2022-23 saw the lowest implementation rate of the annual development programme (ADP) in at least the last 10 years, with only 41.65 per cent of the total outlay being spent till March, showed official figures.

Bangladesh gravitated towards external borrowing to finance its budget deficit in fiscal 2021-22, leveraging the country’s capacity to absorb more of the relatively economical foreign loans.

At least 552 projects that were supposed to be finished by June this year could not meet deadlines.  

Policymakers will find it tough to bring some sort of a balance between targets to ensure economic growth while containing inflation in the next fiscal year, economist Zahid Hussain said yesterday.

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has been failing to achieve tax collection targets since the fiscal year of 2012-13 because of lofty goals set by the government and the absence of major reforms.

Pragmatism was the order of the day when the finance division sat down to draft the development budget for fiscal 2021-22.

There are bright sparks in all corners of the economy, according to the provisional GDP figures for fiscal 2021-22, which do not show a hint of a pandemic hangover when others are still plodding along.

Bangladesh’s economy has grown 7.25 per cent in the outgoing fiscal year of 2021-22, powered by an expansion of manufacturing activities, according to the provisional data of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).