Allocation of Total Government Expenditure by Sectors FY 2019-20

In a push to widen the social safety net, the government decided to include all registered differently abled people, and more marginalised and vulnerable ones under its protection.

Mobile phone services are likely to become costlier from today due to increased taxes. The National Board of Revenue sent a regulatory order to the mobile carries to increase the supplementary duty (SD) to 10 percent from 5 from midnight yesterday.

Businesses yesterday welcomed the budget as the government proposed some new initiatives which would aid growth, give rise to new entrepreneurs and enable more people to enjoy benefits of social safety net programmes.

Shifting from its initial plan to slap a uniform rate, the government has finally proposed four rates of Value Added Tax to please businesspeople and take them on board to implement the new VAT law from the next fiscal year.

The government has resorted to deficit financing, largely through bank borrowing and sale of high-cost savings certificates, increasing the interest payment burden on its shoulders and fuelling inflation.

The government should support the garment exporters by devaluing taka against US dollar instead of giving them direct cash incentives, two economists said yesterday.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday proposed doubling the subsidy for the gas sector to Tk 9,600 crore for 2019-20, from Tk 4,500 crore in the previous year.

The government has significantly raised the prices of tobacco products to curb consumption.

All eyes were on fever-stricken Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal as he stepped into parliament to unveil his maiden national budget yesterday.

Rejaul Karim, a college teacher by profession, took a personal loan of Tk 6 lakh at 9.50 percent interest from a private commercial bank in 2015 to tackle some family emergencies.

More than a year ago, when Mohammad Zayed graduated from a university college in the capital, his family started expecting that he would soon take over the financial responsibility.

The new budget is growth-friendly and has set ambitious goals but shied away from addressing the key challenges confronting the economy, said a number of economists in their immediate reactions.

The health budget proposed yesterday did not address the issue of rising expenditure of healthcare in the country that forces some four to five million people into poverty every year, analysts said.

In 2010, the government decided to construct a 128-kilometre (km) metre gauge rail track to link Chattogram with tourist town Cox’s Bazar at a cost of Tk 1,852.35 crore.

Tax-free dividend income raised to Tk 50,000 from Tk 25,000; ​15% additional tax imposed on retained earnings over 50% of paid-up capital

A look at the revised budget for the outgoing financial year and its state of implementation up to the month of March reconfirm the main weakness of our financial management, namely, the persistently low revenue mobilisation that routinely misses its target.

Walking back on its election pledge to eradicate black money, the government in its first budget of the current tenure has once again kept the scope for whitening money.

Imported smartphones are scheduled to turn much costlier as the government has proposed increasing supplementary duty from 10 percent to 25 percent.

Afsana Rahman’s maternity leave is about to end, and so baby formula milk will soon have to substitute breast milk for her second child. As she and her husband are both job holders with fixed income, she now has to adjust her monthly expenditures to make ends