Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has presented the proposed national budget of fiscal 2021-22 in the Jatiya Sangsad focusing on health, agriculture, social safety nets and job creation.
The size of the proposed national budget is Tk 6,03,681 crore, which is 17.5 per cent of the GDP.
The proposed national budget outlines the measures to save lives and create more jobs so that people can cope with the fallout of Covid-19 pandemic.
A total of Tk 3,78,357 crore has been earmarked for operational and other heads of the proposed budget, while Tk 2,25,324 crore has been allocated for annual development programme (ADP).
In the proposed budget for 2021-22, the government has fixed growth rate for FY2021-2022 at 7.2 percent remaining consistent with the long-term plan and taking the post-Covid recovery situation into account.
While placing the budget, the said, “Bangladesh’s sustained achievement of high GDP growth in the last decade has been halted temporarily due to the effects of the Covid-pandemic. Even though we achieved a record 8.15 per cent growth in FY2018-2019, it has slowed down to 5.2 per cent in FY2019-2020 due to the pandemic.”
“The GDP growth rate was originally estimated to be 8.20 per cent for FY2020-2021 on the assumptions that the economy would recover from the impact of the pandemic. But the economic activities slowed down and the expected momentum in import and export activities did not take place due to the continuation of the impact of the pandemic and the surge of its second wave and resulting lockdowns in various countries in the world including Bangladesh,” the minister added.
Mustafa Kamal further said, “However, considering the better-than-expected growth in remittances and the implementation of the large stimulus packages by the government to facilitate economic recovery, the GDP growth rate has been revised at 6.1 per cent for the current fiscal year. Alongside, the growth rate for FY2021-2022 has been fixed at 7.2 per cent remaining consistent with the government’s long-term plan and taking the post-Covid recovery situation into account. It is expected that the inflation rate will be 5.3 percent during the period.”
