Honourable finance minister AMA Muhith has proposed the national budget for

the 2017-18 FY in the parliament on June 01, 2017. The most experienced
finance minister of Bangladesh has broken his own record of placing maximum
budget in the parliament. The total size of the proposed budget is taka 4.26
trillion along with an annual development plan of about taka 1.55 trillion. The
sizes of the total outlay and ADP are both the ever highest in Bangladesh
budgets. Critics called it an election budget to manage everybody. Few
criticisms came with crueller words like to cut mass peoples pocket and collect
election expenditure of the party. In spite of all the political criticisms, we
welcome this biggest budget in the national history. Before going into detailed
evaluation, I would like to have a look on the development budget allocation.

As per the proposed development budget transportation and communication got

the highest priority with about 27.4% allocation. Bangladesh economy is
transforming from agriculture dependency into industrial economy. During this
transformation stage transportation and communication sector got its justified
priority. So no doubt that, the experienced brain committed a justified move.
The second highest budgetary allocation goes to the education and technology
sector. It is another wonderful step from the honourable minister. But it makes
me sorry that the healthcare sector is just neglected in this budget with 6.1%
budget that stood at the 6th position of the ADP. It could get the 2nd or 3rd
highest priority. Because till now there is only one child hospital in Bangladesh
for 160 million people. The capital city is the only way out for treating many
serious diseases. The government healthcare sector is overloaded to bear the
demands of 160 million populations. Private healthcare facilities are just out of
reach to 80% of the citizens. In such a situation healthcare sector deserves more
budgetary allocation to establish more seats in the existing district level
government hospitals. Establishing specialised hospitals at the divisional or
district level is a justified demand of the mass people. Childcare is crying loudly
in Shaymoli when a serious child needs ICU facilities to save his / her life.
The local government and rural development got 15.3%, Energy and electricity
got 13.5% of the proposed ADP. To ensure a balanced development of the
country local government and rural development deserves attention. Similarly,
energy and electricity are the inputs to industrialisation and essential catalyst of
mass people’s living standard. The honourable minister explained his
achievement to bring 9,000 MW electricity generation capacities to 15,000
MW. But till now we are experiencing uncontrollable load shedding in the
capital city especially during last two months. The experience of the rural
people is even more agonising than that of the city duellers. At the same time a
significant portion of the rural Bangladesh is still to get electricity connection.
In this circumstance energy and electricity deserves extra attention.

Now we would like to have a look on the sources of this money. The finance
minister has proposed to collect 62% of the revenue through the National Board
of Revenue (NBR). It could be an extra pressure on the income tax and customs
collectors. As a result, mass people especially the business community could
face tough treatments from the NBR people. At the same time, single rate VAT
collection has been proposed with a waiver list which is offering a relief to some
identified groups but in general poor people have to be brought out from this
VAT net. It is not clear how the government is planning to do so.

This budget has an over dependency on foreign aid and foreign loan. There are
many examples of our inefficiency in utilising existing foreign assistance. But in
the proposed budget these sources have shown a 3 times growth. How such a
large amount of foreign assistance will be managed and how we could utilise
those with our existing project implementation capacity remains a big question.
Therefore, how the budget deficit of Tk. 1.12 trillion will be made up is
remaining a very prominent grey area. If the government borrows unusual
amount of money from the local sources than the private sector entrepreneurs
could face credit deficit.
I am afraid of the proposal of imposing Tk. 800 as excise duty on bank deposits
of Tk. 1-10 lakh. This decision is completely at variance with the government
move for inclusive banking / financing. At the same time, it would be a pocket
cutting decision for the low income group who are maintaining bank accounts
with one lakh taka just to face any inconvenient situation or emergency.
Therefore, this slab for imposing excise duty could be raised to Tk. 10-20 lakh.
Less than Tk. 10 lakh should be exempted from imposing excise duty; otherwise
poor people will lose interest in saving money and depositing them in banks.

As the number of unemployed higher educated youths in the country is rising

day by day, we were expecting a special move from the government to address
this issue through this budget. But relevant initiatives to generate employment
or develop entrepreneurship are not visible in this budget though the honourable
minister could defend himself by the GDP growth projection conducive to job
creation. But still job creating projects deserve extra care in current situation of
unemployment. Special allocation or mechanism is required for employment
generation and entrepreneurship development.

A very good decision has been taken by reducing corporate tax rate and
inspiring green industrialisation. But personal income tax slab also deserves to
get hiked because people’s living cost is rising throughout the country due to
inflation and other developmental effects. As the living cost of the mass people
is rising, the personal tax-free income slab should be raised further.

Finally, we would like to conclude this brief evaluation on the proposed budget
2017-18 with a hope that, the honourable parliament members will evaluate the
proposed budget and propose adjustments in some areas like increasing the slab
of bank deposit to impose excise duty in line with the vision of inclusive
banking, increasing the personal income tax slab due to rise of living cost of the
mass people etc. And finally the most experienced finance minister will rethink
few issues to make this budget more people-oriented, pro-poor and pro-
development budget.