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.

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.

The government decision to reimpose 25 percent customs duty on rice import in a bid to protect growers is likely to fall short of expectation as most of the small farmers have already sold their produce to middlemen.

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.

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 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's allocation for the power and energy sector has been rising in the last one decade, but the country is still struggling to meet the spiralling demand for energy.

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.

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.

The government is going to bring another 12 lakh people under social safety net programmes in the next financial year with the introduction of an electronic fund transfer system to ensure that the money goes directly to the accounts of the beneficiaries.

VAT burden on consumers are going to rise as the revenue authority focuses more on increasing the existing rate of VAT on various goods and services to attain increased collection goal for the next fiscal year 2018-19.

Finance minister AMA Muhith gives an outline of Universal Pension Scheme and hopes that preparatory work for its implementation may start from next year.

The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) says neither the revenue collection target nor the expenditure goal will be achieved in the next fiscal year as both the goals are much higher than the current fiscal year.

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith today rolled out a Tk 4,64,573 crore national budget for fiscal year 2018-19 setting the GDP growth target at 7.8 percent and outlining a set of plans-strategies to build a prosperous, happy and peaceful country.

Government employees can get loans for the construction of house or purchase of flats anywhere in the country as a policy guideline has already been formulated for providing such loan from the banking system.

BNP strongly criticises the budget Finance Minister AMA Muhith placed in the parliament, saying it is imaginary and aimed to gain popularity ahead of the election.

Citing the government's commitment to ensure a 'Digital Bangladesh', Finance Minister AMA Muhith says that 8,000 km of optical fibre cables have been installed in 1104 union parishads of 114 upazilas in 64 districts.

Government is planning to impose 5 percent value added tax on the ride-sharing services which will make the new kind of transporting system in big cities of the country costlier.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith proposes introduction of new provisions in the tax laws over the taxation of virtual and digital sectors, such as Facebook, Google, Youtube, on their incomes earned in Bangladesh.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith expects that export earnings of the country will increase by additional US$40 billion and 10 million more jobs will be created in the economic zones (EZs).