The Jatiya Sangsad passes the proposed Tk 4,64,573 crore national budget for 2018-19 fiscal year.

Housing and Public Works Minister Engr Mosharraf Hossain suggests cutting down customs duty on liquor for the sake of flourishing tourism in the country.

No VAT or tax has been imposed on remittance in the proposed budget for 2018-19 fiscal year, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) says.

​Opposition and some of the ruling party lawmakers in the parliament criticises Finance Minister AMA Muhith for not stating any measures in the proposed budget for fiscal 2018-19 against irregularities in the financial and banking sectors.

The proposed budget for fiscal 2018-19 does not have any directions to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) says.

The proposed budgetary measures for fiscal 2018-19 will benefit the high and low income people, leaving the middle- and lower middle-class, which form the majority of Bangladesh's population, strained, said the Centre for Policy Dialogue yesterday.

Shifa Hosne and her husband have been saving up money to buy a small flat in the city, where property price is already way beyond the capacity of service holders with fixed income.

Fy 2018-19...

For the first time in Bangladesh, a finance minister apologised for his inability to create an opportunity to hold elaborate discussions on supplementary budget in parliament.

National Budget 2018-19 ....

The government is continuing to treat banks with kid gloves instead of going tough on them for the rampant financial irregularities and continued poor judgement.

The government plans following in Europe's footsteps to tap digital marketing's popularity, with Finance Minister AMA Muhith yesterday proposing introducing provisions on taxing earnings of networking tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Youtube.

Every year when the budget is placed in the parliament, Taufiq Hasan, a 35-year-old private sector employee, gets all worked up about which products and services he would have to pay more the following fiscal year.

Chamber and trade body leaders yesterday said the government would struggle to generate higher revenue in the course of implementing the budget in the election year.

The government is going to connect the national savings certificate (NSC) buyers' database with that used in the creation of national identity (NID) cards to prevent the certificates from going into the hands of ineligible people.

The proposed budget for the next fiscal year is unrealistic, as it lacks significant structural and policy changes, analysts said in their immediate reaction yesterday.

Fast-track projects, as the title suggests, are supposed to be implemented at breakneck speed because they boost economic activities once they are complete.

The government will bring an end to the vulnerable situation public jute mills are in by running those under the public private partnership (PPP) model.

The proposed rise in corporate tax will hurt the flow of fresh investment into the garment sector as entrepreneurs will feel discouraged to inject fresh funds, said the top leader of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) yesterday.

As the government had formulated National Education Policy immediately after coming to power in 2009, educationists started advocating for spending at least six percent of the GDP for education.