The proposed budget for 2013-14 fiscal would not be implementable as the financing sources mentioned are not capable of supplying adequate funds, said AB Mirza Azizul Islam, visiting professor at Brac University and former finance adviser to the last caretaker government in his reaction Thursday.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith placed the budget proposal worth Tk2.22tn Thursday at the parliament.
Aziz said, government has kept more allocations and expenditures in this budget just like the last one. However, supporting financial sources which have been named are incapable.
“Budget should be implementable and should reflect desire and expectation. Government would face barriers implementing this budget,” he said.
He said, during the last fiscal, the government’s target for tax collection through the National Board of Revenue (NBR), as a major financing source was Tk1122.59bn. But, it could not be obtained in the last 10 months.
In the new budget, however, the target has been set at Tk1360bn. Mirza Aziz thought this target would not be possible to achieve, particularly due to political turmoil.
He also labelled the GDP growth target of 7.2% for the fiscal 2013-14 as unrealistic, saying, “It is unachievable, even in the current fiscal it has remained at 6.03%. Foreign donors have already predicted GDP growth at below 6%, in addition, the current political unrest, adversity in banking and other business sectors will have negative effects on the growth.”
The $3bn target for foreign donations would also be impossible to obtain, he added. In the previous budget the target was $2.2bn whereas the obtained amount was $1.2bn in April, 2013.
This will increase borrowing pressures on the banking sector, if the government fails to collect fund from its named sources, said Mirza Aziz.
The government aims to borrow Tk260bn from the banks, which will affect the private sector further and will also hurt growth.
