The government on Thursday unveiled a Tk 603,681 crore-national budget for 2021-22 fiscal to get the economy going in spite of the crippling Covid-19 pandemic with a strong focus on vaccinating the population and shoring up their jobs.

A bold target has been set to achieve 7.2 per cent of GDP growth as Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal presented the budget proposals in Parliament, with deficit totalling Tk. 214,618 crore, which is 6.2 per cent of GDP.

To meet the deficit, Tk 101,228 crore will come from external sources, while Tk 113,453 crore from domestic sources of which Tk 76,452 crore will come from the banking system and Tk 37,001 crore from savings certificates and other non-bank sources.

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 The size of the budget themed  "Bangladesh towards a resilient future protecting lives and livelihoods' is 17.5 percent of the GDP.

 He said that the growth rate for 2021-2022 has been fixed at 7.2 percent remaining consistent with the government’s long-term plan and taking the post-Covid recovery situation into account. “It is expected that the inflation rate will be 5.3 per cent during the period.”

 Total allocation for operating and other expenditures has been set at Tk 378,357 crore, while the allocation for the annual development program is Tk 225,324 crore.

 “In the national budget, we usually formulate development plans in a coordinated manner by combining short, medium and long term action plans. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we do not have all kinds of data in front of us for this year,” he said.

 He also mentioned that Bangladesh, under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, is moving ahead on the path of faster economic transition than other nations by overcoming the initial impact of COVID-19.

 “But already a second wave and even a third wave have begun around the world, the impact of which is quite pronounced everywhere,” he said.

Therefore, he mentioned that in the budget for the next fiscal year, in tandem with development, the lives and livelihood of the marginalised people of the country are receiving priority.

 He said that Bangladesh has reached a new height after its transition to a developing economy.

The Finance Minister said that Bangladesh’s sustained achievement of high GDP growth in the last decade has been halted temporarily due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 The total revenue income in the fiscal year 2021-2022 has been fixed at Tk 389,000 crore, which is 11.3 percent of GDP. Out of this, Tk 330,000 crore will be collected through the NBR sources. Tax revenue from non-NBR sources has been estimated at Tk 16,000 crore, while the non-tax revenue is estimated to be Tk 43,000 crore.

 Health, agriculture and employment generation have been given priority while allocating resources for the ADP.

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The sector-wise allocations in the new budget:

From  2021-22 ADP some Tk 66164 crore or 29.4 percent has proposed for human resources sectors (education, health and related others), Tk 48,808 crore or 21.7 per cent for the overall agriculture sector (agriculture, rural development and rural institutions, water resources and related others), Tk 27,367 crore or 12.1 percent for the power and energy sector, Tk 59,499 crore or 26.4 percent for communication (roads, railways, bridges and other communications related), and Tk 23, 486 crore or 10.4 percent for 33 other sectors.

Allocation proposed for the social infrastructure sector in the proposed budget is Tk 170,510 crore, in which allocation for human resources sector (education, health and other related sectors) will be Tk 155,847 crore.

Allocation proposed for the physical infrastructure sector will be Tk. 179,681 crore , in which Tk 74,102 crore will go to overall agriculture and rural development, Tk 69,474 crore to overall communications, and Tk 27,484 crore to power and energy.

A total of Tk 1,45,150 crore has been proposed for general services, which is 24.04 percent of the total allocation.

Tk 34,648 crore is proposed for public-private partnerships (PPP), financial

assistance to different industries, subsidies, equity investments in state-owned,

commercial and financial institutions, which is 5.74 percent of the total allocation.

Some Tk 68,589 crore for interest payment, which is 11.36 per cent of the total allocation, Tk 5,103 crore for net lending and other expenses, which is 0.85 per cent of the total allocation.

The Finance Minister said that Bangladesh’s sustained achievement of high GDP growth in the last decade halted temporarily due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even though it achieved a record 8.15 percent growth in FY2018-2019, it has slowed down to 5.2 per cent in FY2019-2020 due to the pandemic.

The GDP growth rate was originally estimated to be 8.20 per cent for FY2020-2021 on the assumptions that the economy would recover from the impact of the pandemic.

 He hoped that in the medium-term, strong domestic demand will be the main source of our growth. The focus will be on increasing consumption and investment to stimulate domestic demand and enhancing exports to augment external demand.

He also hoped that the growth in remittances will also continue in the medium-term.

The finance minister hoped that these targets will be achieved through the rapid implementation of the works to establish Economic Zones.

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Regarding the health sector, he said that a number of plans have been undertaken to develop the health sector to address the impact of COVID-19. The implementation of some of these projects has begun in the current 2020-21 fiscal year and will continue in the next financial year.

“I would like to propose to allocate Tk 10,000 crore in the next fiscal year to meet the emergency requirements to respond to the pandemic,” he said.

For creating employment for the more than two million new entrants, the Finance Minister put confidence on the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution has opened up the door to create unprecedented new employment opportunities for skilled manpower both for home and abroad.