Budget Shouldn’t Allow Whitening Black Money Anymore: CPD

The Centre for Policy Dialog (CPD) on Saturday recommended increasing the tax-free income level from Tk 250,000 to Tk 350,000 and not retaining the provision of black money whitening facilities in the national budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year.

The CPD also recommended the upcoming budget should be formulated keeping the focus on the four sectors --health, agriculture, social safety net, and employment.

"We need to give importance to four sectors – health, agriculture,  social safety net, and employment – not to rely on other sectors in the forthcoming budget. This time, the budget would have to be planned to hold the four things in mind," said CPD Executive Director Dr Fahmida Khatun at a virtual media briefing on 'COVID-19-Present Context and Budget 2020-21 FY' here.

In designing the budget, she said it needs to cut down unproductive expenditures and focus on necessary and productive ones for making the economy vibrant.

On the mobilization of revenue, Dr. Fahmida Khatun said it needed to expand the tax-net and to strictly curb all kinds of tax evasion and illicit financial flows (IFFs) with an iron hand to raise the tax-GDP ratio to meet expenditure at this critical time.

Source: UNB