Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today proposed formulating rules for authorising tax return preparers (TRPs) in Bangladesh with a view to expanding the tax net by adding more individual taxpayers.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal unveils a proposed budget of Tk 761,785 crore for the 2023–24 fiscal year in the national parliament today.

The government wants to keep the corporate tax rates unchanged for all sectors for the fiscal year 2023-24, said Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today.

Owners of more than one car will face an environmental protection surcharge from 2023-24 as the government looks to discourage the use of vehicles in a bid to curb environmental pollution.

The proposed budget will be 15.2 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the budget speech of the finance minister.

Since the budget is a political process, the rules of the budgetary game are set within that continuum.

The government’s foreign debt servicing burden may rise by as much as 45 percent in the next fiscal year due to the devaluation of taka and higher utilisation of foreign loans in recent years.

In 2019, when AHM Mustafa Kamal took charge as the finance minister, the Bangladesh economy was taxing for take-off for its long-haul flight to the developed country club.

High corporate taxes on banks, non-bank financial institutions, merchant banks, insurance companies and telecommunication companies are not logical as their profit is not high compared to capital, said Shahidul Islam, chief executive officer of VIPB Asset Management Company.

The voices of disadvantaged groups, the poor and small entrepreneurs have remained unheard when it comes to policy-making as fiscal policies have been captured by vested sections of society, alleged Towfiqul Islam Khan, a senior research fellow of the Centre for Policy Dialogue.

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.

Says economist Zahid Hussain 

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.