Economists gave high marks on the budgetary commitments for socioeconomic development, but raised strong doubts about the tax revenue assumptions as Finance Minister AMA Muhith placed the budget proposal in parliament yesterday.
They were of the view that the proposed budget lacks specific time-bound future plan to implement the measures. In his budget speech, the minister said the government’s policy is to enhance public expenditure in the next five years and to this end domestic resource mobilisation has to be scaled up.
“It lacks prioritization … it lacks time-bound specific commitment,” World Bank lead economist in Dhaka Zahid Hussain said.
The budget has a comprehensive discussion about socio-economic agenda like infrastructure, education, governance, environment, rural development and empowerment of women.
“It is a positive side. But this comprehensive discussion we have seen in sixth five year plan and also in perspective plan. But people expects generally the specific development strategy for the economic development,” he said.
Revenue collection will also be very challenging as the proposed budget's indication to bring some reformation in tax administration is not enough to fill up the revenue target, he said.
Moreover, the NBR might loss revenue Tk500 crore due to wavering some supplementary duty and tax at source. However, reducing supplementary duty and tax at source is good, he said.
Research Director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) Zaid Bokht said: “I think it is an expansionary budget that continued over the last three years.” He found the government has mainly emphasised on public investment .He said a lot of saying in the proposed budget about improvement of energy and power crisis, and service plan, but it lacks strong guideline to solve the problems. He left many questions on how realistic are the targets.
