Bangladesh is going through a transitional period, where intense politicking is taking place in apparent preparation for what is expected to be the first fair election in many years.
The transitional government, largely operating under the mandate of last July’s Monsoon Revolution, is also under tremendous pressure to steer an economy—ruined by cronyism—back onto the path of recovery.
In two days’ time, we are expecting the national budget for FY26 to be announced.
Consider the following as a layman’s oversimplified idea of a budget.
Simply put, a national budget is an annual financial plan detailing the government's projected income and expenses. Economists and experts may dwell on issues ranging from micro and macroeconomic stability to structural adjustments, and more.
But what exactly does a budget mean at the level of the ordinary citizen?
- They need opportunities to be created for income and employment
- They need access to quality education for a brighter future
- They need a healthy life worth living
When it comes to income generation and employment opportunities in Bangladesh, the current situation is dismal—with high unemployment and low levels of private sector and foreign direct investment.
A budget should be more than a tally of revenue earnings and public expenditures. It should contain a vision and a plan to create a conducive ecosystem within the national economy that attracts both domestic and foreign investments, thereby generating employment.
And Bangladesh needs this more now than perhaps at any other point in its 55-year history. If the findings of the country’s premier think tank, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), are to be trusted, 2.1 million people lost their jobs in just the last six months of 2024—of whom women accounted for 85.7 percent.
Employment conditions for women remain fragile: 80.8 percent are in vulnerable jobs characterized by low productivity and poor returns. A significant portion of youth—both male and female (around 40% of those aged 15–24)—and nearly two-thirds of young women in Bangladesh are neither in employment, education, nor training. This reflects a serious underutilization of human potential—a national loss we can ill afford.
High inflation has persisted for over two and a half years, while wages have remained stagnant. Compared to urban areas, inflation is even higher in rural regions, where
alternative work opportunities are limited. As a result, many people have fallen back below the poverty line.
The budget must include policy directions and actionable measures to arrest the slide of the poor and ultra-poor, especially those who had previously moved up the economic ladder. More importantly, the unemployed youth must be absorbed into the job market—which itself needs to expand through investment-friendly policies and an enabling environment.
When it comes to education, Bangladesh’s expenditure as a percentage of GDP has hovered between only 1.5 and 1.8 percent for the past decade—one of the lowest in both the world and the region.
The current level of public spending on education is inadequate given the country's development milestones and goals, such as graduating from Least Developed Country (LDC) status in 2026 and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Beyond the low investment, there are concerns about the effective utilization of allocated resources and the overall efficiency of spending.
In the health sector, Bangladesh’s budgetary outlay is the lowest in South Asia. In the current fiscal year, the country is spending less than one percent of its GDP on public health. In recent years, Bangladesh’s health expenditure as a share of GDP has been among the lowest across the 45 LDCs.
People in Bangladesh must pay for most of their healthcare out of pocket—whether for medicine, treatment, or services—as the government covers barely a quarter of public health expenditures. Out-of-pocket expenses account for 73 percent of total health expenditures in Bangladesh, one of the highest rates in the world.
If the upcoming budget fails to address these crucial issues of employment, education, and health, the disconnect between budget announcements and the everyday concerns of ordinary people will only persist.