Research institute Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) believes that the direction to bring stability to the macro economy after overcoming the crisis is not in the proposed national budget for the next financial year.
According to the organization, many ambitious targets have been set in economic parameters without taking into account the reality.
The Executive Director of the organization Dr. Fahmida Khatun said all this on Friday (June 7) at a press briefing organized by the CPD to review the budget presented in the Jatiyo Sangsad on Thursday.
At a function organized at a conference center in the capital, she said, initiatives were needed to deal with the crisis in the budget rather than towards growth.
Commenting that a general budget has been given in a challenging and critical time, she said, this budget is traditional like other budgets. It is not possible to deal with the crisis with this budget.
CPD Distinguished Fellow Prof. Mustafizur Rahman, who participated in the discussion at the event, said that the price of products has gone up a lot in the last few years and the common people are in discomfort. Inflation has been around 10 percent for more than two years, but workers' basic wages are rising only 5 percent. Poor people are struggling to meet this basic level.
He also said that the inflation of consumer goods of low income people has exceeded 20 percent. He also commented that as a result their life has become more difficult.
Research director of CPD Dr. Khandkar Golam Moazzem said, after seeing the proposed budget of the previous financial year, I did not think that it was the new budget of the new government. Rather, it seems to me that it is an old budget of the new government.
He said the kind of intelligence that everyone expected from a new Finance Minister and State Minister, was not found in reality. In order to deal with the current crisis, expenditure reduction initiatives have been taken in the private sector, but it is not seen in the public sector.
"When will Austerity be seen at public expense?" Questioning, he said that the economy cannot be brought back from crisis to the mainstream through such government spending. Rather, it will prolong the period of bringing it back to the mainstream.
Commenting that this year's budget may be a major reason for the increase in price inflation in non-food products, Dr. Moazzem said VAT has been imposed on many products and services. Added to this is the announcement of an increase in electricity and fuel prices every four months. He also commented that all these things provoke inflation.
In the key-note paper Dr. Fahmida Khatun said, the way to ensure the environment needed for business, trade and investment to improve the GDP growth to 6.75 percent and reduce the inflation rate to 6.0 percent has not come up in the budget.
Although some targets for increasing foreign exchange reserves have been given, there is no direction in the budget about how to achieve them.
Commenting that there is instability in every part of the economy, he said, starting from revenue income to expenditure management, government loans from banks, liquidity crisis, downward growth in exports, decline in currency exchange rate, there is little opportunity to achieve the big goal of promotion.
Regarding the government's plan to take a big loan from the bank to deal with the deficit, he said, if this is done, the flow of credit to the private sector will decrease. The pressure of paying more interest will also increase.
Dr. Fahmida urged to bring efficiency in the implementation of Annual Development Program (ADP) to ensure discipline in government expenditure management. She said that the implementation time and cost increased as the projects were stalled for years. This also increases the cost of services receivable from the project.