The government has decided to increase the size of next fiscal year’s budget by 7.2 percent with no cut in the subsidy and Annual Development Programme (ADP) allocations.

The decisions came from a budget management resource committee meetings held at the ministry of finance in the capital yesterday, which also projected to keep inflationary pressure within eight percent.

In the meet, the Gross Domestic Production (GDP) growth target has also been fixed at above seven percent, which some of the participants in the discussions termed ambitious in the backdrops of the global economic situation and the domestic earning and investment projections, a senior government official who attended two consecutive meetings on fiscal coordination and on budget management.

Finance minister AMA Muhith presided over the meetings.

The source also said the government wants to increase the revenue earnings to a maximum level next fiscal to maintain the budget deficit within 5.1 percent. In the current 2011-12 fiscal, deficit has crossed five per cent of the budget size, he added

“In the meeting, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has been asked to prepare a report on the new scopes of revenue earnings in the next fiscal year”.

The NBR was also asked to submit reports on revenue earnings before the next budget resource committee meeting, he added.

Prime Minister’s economic affair adviser Mashiur Rahman , NBR Chairman Nasiruddin Ahemd , Economic Relation Division secretary Iqbal Mahumund , Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman, Statistics Division secretary Riti Ibrahim and planning secretary Bhuiyan Shafiqul Islam, among others, attended the two consecutive meetings.

Meeting sources said size of the next 2012-13 fiscal year’s budget will be slightly below Tk 2 trillion.

According to mid-term budgetary framework estimation, the size of the next budget will be Tk 1.89 trillion with a deficit of Tk 508.9 billion. The size of current fiscal year’s revised budget is Tk 1.61 trillion.

Meeting sources said finance minister has asked the revenue board to increase its earnings to ease the government’s fiscal pressure. Bangladesh Bank was asked to strictly monitor the banking sector to implement government government’s policy for the banking sector.

Member of the budget management committee said yesterday’s meetings also emphasised on more investment in the agriculture and energy sectors in next fiscal as like the present fiscal year. Besides, the meetings also decided to give adequate subsidy to agriculture sector for keeping agriculture sector growth above four per cent.

Meeting sources said the total subsidy in the next fiscal may be fixed at Tk 400 billion, from the initially allocated Tk 200 billion for the current fiscal.

But the amount of subsidy in the current fiscal has increased to Tk 470 billion in the middle of the fiscal, sources said.

Earlier, the power division sought Tk 100 billion as subsidies to the government for smooth supply of electricity across the country in next fiscal. The government allocated a subsidy of Tk 50 billion to the sector for the current fiscal.

The next fiscal year’s development budget will be over Tk 500 billion, creating subsidy pressure. But the government scale up its revenue collection between Tk 1.14 trillion and Tk 1.20 trillion to offset the pressure, meeting sources said.

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 29th March 2012