A corporate tax cut for listed banks, insurance companies and financial institutions and announcement of development measures for the bond market are the only achievements of stock investors from the budget announced for FY 2018-19.

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.

Asad Kazi of Bagerhat was advised dialysis for kidney disease. His wife Hawa told doctors that they wanted medicinal treatment as dialysis would cost them Tk 7,000 a month on average.

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.

Customer will have to pay more for products and service bought from one's mobile phone as the government yesterday introduced a 5 percent value-added tax on those from next fiscal year and also raised the surcharge on handset imports.

Fy 2018-19...

It looks like another repeat story. We had a big budget that failed to achieve its targets. Now we are pushing for a bigger one with higher targets. But with the ground reality remaining the same, are we to see a story foretold for the next year?

National Budget 2018-19 ....

Interest payments get the fourth highest allocation, which is also higher than the combined allocation for health, social security and welfare in the proposed budget for 2018-19.

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).

The national financial plan sometimes meets the expectations of stock investors and sometimes does the opposite. Here is a graph that shows how Dhaka Stock Exchange experiences in the budget days.