Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith yesterday said Bangladesh is already on the path towards becoming a middle-income country, but ill attempt is being conducted to stop its socio-economic progress.
Mentioning it as a temporary crisis, Muhith said the government along with the common people’s heroic role would resist such anti-people activities within a short period.
He made the remarks while placing a report on the first and second quarter implementation, progress, trend of earnings and expenditure as well as macro economic analysis on the current year’s budget in the House.
“The revenue income has gone up by 13.2% during the July-December period in the current financial year over the corresponding period of last fiscal year,” Muhith told the house.
But the government’s expenditure went down by 1% to Tk76,798 crore during the period in the current fiscal year against Tk76,854 crore spent during the corresponding period of the last fiscal year, he added.
Besides, the implementation of the Annual Development Programme (ADP) increased by 10% in the same period of the current Fiscal Year compared to the last year’s July-December period, he said.
He also told the House that the export earnings increased to US$14.9 billion in the first two quarters of the current fiscal year, 1.6% higher than that in the July-December period in 2013-2014.
During the same time, the country’s imports rose to US$ 22.3 billion, 18.3% higher than that of the corresponding period of the last fiscal year, the Finance Minister said in his report.
According to the report, the opening of the Letters of Credit (LCs) and their disposals increased to 13.2% and 10.1% respectively during the July-December period of the current financial year.
The minister said the country’s remittance earning during the period rose by 10.6% from 8.5% of the same period during the last fiscal year, thus the foreign currency reserve reaching to US$22.3 billion till December last.
Muhith in his report also said that the inflation rate on a point-to-point basis declined to 6.1% in December last from 7.3% of the previous year’s same period.
Meanwhile, the government implemented the major portion of the previous year’s budget promised in 2013-2014,” the finance minister said, adding, “the people are now getting the fruits of the government’s relentless efforts exerted over the last five years in the key sectors like power and energy.”
