The government has not yet made any decision regarding the allocation of dearness allowance (DA) for its officials and employees, said Finance Adviser Dr Salehuddin Ahmed on Tuesday.

"We have not made any decision regarding the dearness allowance yet," he told journalists in response to questions about the ongoing deliberations, after a meeting of the Advisors' Council Committee on Government Purchase (ACCGP) at the Secretariat.

When asked whether the government was reconsidering its stance on the DA, the finance adviser asked, "Who made the announcement about the dearness allowance? I don’t know who made the announcement. Once it comes to the Ministry of Finance, then we will decide whether to give it or not, and only then will we make the announcement."

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Sought comments on whether a proposal has been forwarded to the Ministry of Finance, Dr Salehuddin said, "We haven’t made any announcement yet. I have not made any decision yet."

The Finance Ministry had recently prepared a draft proposal to provide a Dearness Allowance ranging from a minimum of 10% to a maximum of 20% of basic salaries for 1.45 million government employees.

The proposal also included the recommendation to exclude the additional 5% annual increment for employees.

According to the Finance Ministry’s calculations, implementing the DA would cost at least Tk 5,000 crore in a single fiscal year.

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To lower the expenditure, the proposal suggested giving a maximum of 20% DA to employees in grades 11 to 20, while those in grades 1 to 10 would receive either 10% or 15%. Should the DA for grades 1 to 10 be set at 10%, it would require over Tk 5,000 crore.

If it were set at 15%, the cost would rise slightly to about TK 5,750 crore. The Finance Ministry has proposed to include this amount in the revised budget.