Finance minister AMA Muhith on Wednesday said the growth of the country’s gross domestic product would be projected at 7.3 per cent for the upcoming fiscal year.
In the outgoing fiscal year, the revised GDP growth is 6.5 per cent, he told reporters after a meeting of the national coordination council on the country’s macro-economy and budget management.
He said the size of the annual development programme would be less than Tk 80,000 crore while the total layout would be around Tk 2,50,000 crore in the new fiscal year.
Muhith said he was facing problem in preparing the budget because of expectation for higher allocation from the ministries and divisions.
He said that expectation was high after the substantial increase in revenue generation by the present government.
Meeting the expectation from the ministries and division was a major challenge for the finance ministry in preparing the new budget, he said.
The finance minister observed that the revenue generation had been slowed down in the outgoing fiscal year that was forcing the finance ministry to be cautious while allocating funds for the revised annual development programme.
He claimed that the prime minister was fully aware of the situation.
‘Otherwise, the finance ministry will not able to maintain discipline in budget management,’ he said adding that the borrowing from the banking sources might overshoot to meet high expenditure.
Muhith, a few days ago, said the next budget would be an ‘ambitious’ one despite lower than expected revenue generation and poor utilisation of foreign loans and grants in the outgoing fiscal year.
He had expressed his optimism that the government might see good revenue growth in the coming fiscal year.
He also hoped that the country’s GDP would grow at the rate of 6.5 per cent in the outgoing fiscal year despite the fact that inflow of net foreign loans and grants dropped to Tk 613 crore in the first six months of the fiscal year compared with that of Tk 1,702 crore during the same period in the last fiscal year.
The revenue collection grew only by12.2 per cent to achieve 38.6 per cent of total revenue target. The ADP implementation stood at 27 per cent, three per cent lower than the rate achieved during the same period in the last fiscal year.
The inflow of remittance and private sector credit growth also marked a slowdown in the first half of this fiscal year.
Muhith said it would not be possible to achieve the growth targeted for this fiscal year because of destructive activities by the opposition political parties between October and December last year.
The finance minister had projected 7.2 per cent GDP growth while announcing the national budget for this fiscal year in June last year.
-With New Age input