Finance minister AMA Muhith on Thursday said the next budget would be an ‘ambitious’ one as it would be the first of the new government. He projected the size of the next budget at around Tk 2.50 lakh crore. Talking to reporters after a pre-budget discussion with local think-tanks including state-funded BIDS and Policy Research Institute at the secretariat, he said the new budget measures will be aimed at five-year tenure of the government.
Muhith said there would be good revenue growth in the coming fiscal year although revenue board was struggling to achieve the target of the current fiscal year.
Not only the revenue but also the utilisation of foreign aids is poor in the current fiscal year.
The government is struggling to implement the Tk 2.22 lakh crore budget for the current fiscal year.
Muhith said they would give special priority to tourism sector along with the energy and power sectors in the next budget.
He admitted that falling private investment despite higher public investment was worrying the government. He said problems would be addressed in the next budget.
The finance minister turned down a proposal by the representative of the think-tanks to raise up the budget deficit which is now fixed at 5 per cent of gross domestic product.
He said higher than 5 per cent budget deficit would push up inflation beyond tolerable level of more than 12 per cent.
Muhith said he accepted another proposal from the officials of the think-tanks who suggested for constituting two advisory committees under the ministry of finance.
One committee will oversee the budget implementation and another will look after revenue side, he said.
He said they would bring seven districts, including existing Tangail, under Zilla budget. He said allocation as per demand by the districts might not be possible in the next fiscal year.
He said they were expecting to made allocation as per demand by the district representatives from 2015-16 onward, aiming at decentralising the budget making and implementation process.
Muhith said the representatives of the think-tanks suggested him to give focus on land utilisation, diversification of agricultural products, PPP and railways.
They also proposed to improve statistics of the country’s employment and update calculation of GDP quarterly.
-With New Age input
