Not a Relief for Commoners

The budget in Bangladesh means panic among the people. Common people do not understand the budget. They just understand that the prices of some products are increasing as a result of the budget.

This time before the announcement of the budget, the price of electricity and gas increases, the price of food products increases, inflation increases by leaps and bounds, and the price of agricultural products will not decrease either. Due to these reasons, there is extreme panic among the common people even before the announcement of the budget.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal is presenting the budget for the fiscal year 2022-2023 in the parliament on June 9. In the next one year, the government will spend two and a half lakh crore taka on various development activities. Most of it will be spent on transport, communications, and power. As always, there is nothing in this budget for the marginalized and common people of the country.

On the other hand, due to the Ukraine-Russia war, the prices of daily necessities all over the world are higher now than at any other time. Despite the best efforts of the government, the prices of daily necessities in Bangladesh are going beyond the purchasing power of the common man day by day. In this context, the people of the whole country are looking at the upcoming national budget. However, 'the government needs to increase spending to revive the economy' - beyond this common philosophy, the government is going to focus on reducing spending. Because the government is going to move away from the expansionary budget for the next financial year and give some contractionary budget. However, an expansionary monetary policy is needed to protect the people from the impact of rising commodity prices.

The size of the budget for the next 2022-2023 fiscal year is being proposed to be Tk. 6 lakh 77 thousand 864 crore, which is 15.4 percent of the total GDP; But the size of the budget for the current financial year was 17.5 percent of GDP. Through this, the government wants to reduce the size of the budget by 2 percent as part of GDP. The size of the budget for the current financial year is six lakh three thousand 681 crore taka. However, even if the size of the budget is reduced, the budget deficit in the next financial year can be stopped at around two and a half lakh crore taka and that would be 5.5 percent of total GDP.