Innovative strategies needed to implement budget

Innovative strategies are needed to reach the budget's aim of keeping inflation at 6 per cent and achieve the ambitious revenue collection target, according to economists.

They said the proposed budget for financial year 2023-24 has set a much higher revenue target than what is usually possible to collect. In addition, the aim of keeping inflation at 6 per cent is also a significant challenge.

Besides, the devaluation of taka against the US dollar and the government's borrowing from the domestic banking sector may continue to exert inflationary pressure.

Therefore, more strategies and commitments are needed than ever before to implement this challenging budget.

These comments came at a roundtable on budget analysis organised by Unnayan Shamannay at the Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled Conference Room at its office in Dhaka yesterday.

In the proposed budget, it is stated that 16.56 per cent of the total fund will be allocated for social security. However, if the allocation for government pensions and development projects is excluded, the share of social security is reduced to 11.6 per cent.

Considering the current economic reality, it is unusual that there are no new social protection programmes for poor and low-income people in urban areas, they said.

Allocations for the health sector has remained around 5 per cent of the budget for a long time, increasing healthcare expenditures for the people.

Rumana Huque An economics professor at DU

Regarding social security, Professor AK Enamul Haque, dean of the business and economics faculty at East West University, said a universal pension scheme is essential to attain the status of a developing country.

However, even if it is planned, the slow pace of implementation is disappointing, he added.

Rumana Huque, an economics professor at Dhaka University, said allocations for the health sector has remained around 5 per cent of the budget for a long time, increasing healthcare expenditures for the people.

SM Zulfiqar Ali, senior research fellow at Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said instead of collecting more taxes from wealthy people, the budget relies heavily on indirect taxes and attempts to collect money from non-taxable individuals through income tax returns, making it impossible to be a people-friendly tax proposal.

Nazneen Ahmed, country economist of the United Nations Development Programme, urged for highest priority to be given to implementing the budget for climate-resilient development.

Atiur Rahman, chairperson of Unnayan Shamannay, presided over the roundtable.

"The proposed budget should be seen as a challenging plan for government revenue for the upcoming financial year considering the reality of the emergency period," he said.

"Additionally, we must remember that Bangladesh's recent macroeconomic achievements will contribute to this challenge," added Rahman, also a former governor of Bangladesh Bank.