he national budget proposed for the fiscal year 2021-22 lacks a clear outline to protect the lives and livelihoods and tackle the challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic, said Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) on Friday. “It has been said in the budget to move ahead by protecting the lives and livelihoods, but there’s no clear outline how it’ll happen through necessary reforms and enhancing institutional capacity,” said CPD Executive Director Fahmida Khatun. Speaking at a press conference, she said, “Unlike last year, there has been clarity of thoughts about Covid management in the budget documents, but it has no similarity with the measures and allocations to tackle the challenges.” CPD, a non-governmental research organisation, arranged the programme at a city hotel to share its observations on the Tk 6,03,680 crore national budget presented by Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal in Parliament on Thursday. Read: CPD finds much in budget out of touch with reality Fahmida said they hoped that the health sector would get much allocation this time, but it did not happen. “The allocation for the sector is 0.95 percent of the GDP like last year. The total allocation has been increased to some extent, but there’s no increase in absolute terms.” Stating that the Health Ministry’s performance is the poorest in implementing the ADP, she said there will be no benefit if the allocation for the sector is enhanced without improving the institutional competence of the sector through reforms. Fahmida also said good governance and accountability must be ensured in the health sector by removing corruption and irregularities for improving its services and proper implementation of the budgetary allocation. “We didn’t see any step over the last one and a half years to strengthen the sector and establish good governance.” Read:New budget unveiled with focus on protecting lives and livelihoods She said the allocation for the social security sector is not sufficient though several thousand crores of taka have been increased. It remains at 3 percent of the GDP like the previous year. “But the amount is negligible compared to the number of poor people in the country.” Besides, she said, a quarter of the total social security has been allocated for the pension of the government employees.

The education sector of the country has been facing numerous risks due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, said Education Minister Dipu Moni Tuesday.