The national budget for the financial year 2024-2025 will be announced on June 6 in parliament against the backdrop of persistent dollar shortages and decade-high inflation, said officials.
Finance minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali would propose new fiscal measures to run the economic activities that witnessed only 3.78 per cent growth in the October-December period of the outgoing FY24.
This will be the first budget by the present finance minister as well as by the present government.聽
In pre-budget discussions, economists have already asked the finance minister to take measures to check inflation, which has been prevailing at over nine per cent on average for the past 21 months, putting low and fixed-income groups in trouble.
Besides, economists also want the finance minister to announce more budgetary allocations for the education and health sectors.
However, finance ministry officials said that the resource crunch amid slow revenue generation and the high-interest rate for overseas borrowing would not allow the government to go for an expansionary budget.
They said that the overall budget is likely to be around Tk 7,97,000 crore in FY25, only 4.6 per cent higher than the original outlay of Tk 7,61,785 crore in outgoing FY24.
The ongoing loan programme with the International Monetary Fund will force the government to announce a contractionary budget in FY25.
The government took $4.7 billion in loan assistance from the IMF to tackle the sharp economic downturn that pulled forex reserves down to below $20 billion from $48 billion in August 2021.
The IMF has advised the government to bring down the budget deficit to 4.6 per cent of gross domestic product in FY25 from 5.2 per cent in outgoing FY24.
Reducing the budget deficit will not allow the government to borrow heavily from local and foreign sources, said finance ministry officials.
Since January 2023, the IMF has disbursed $1.1 billion, while the next tranche is due in the next month.
The finance ministry officials said that the annual development programme in FY25 was likely to be fixed at Tk 2,65,000 crore, just a little over the original Tk 2,63,000 crore in outgoing FY24.
The growth in gross domestic product is likely to be fixed at 6.75 per cent.
Bangladesh scored 7.1 per cent growth in GDP in 2021鈥�22 but saw the rate slow down to 6.03 per cent in 2022鈥�23.
