POOR allocation for sectors such as social safety, education, health and agriculture as proposed in the budget for the 2024–25 financial year is concerning. The proposed budget would hit the disadvantaged hardest. Economists at a discussion that the Citizen’s Platform for SDGs organised on June 10 on the implications of the budget proposal for the disadvantaged, observe that the proposal has offered no relief for the disadvantaged and low-income people while it has offered unethical and questionable benefits for the corrupt and the rich. When the poor and low- and fixed-income people reel from high inflation, which has been hovering around 10 per cent for more than a year, the government has not heeded the call for an increase in social security and welfare allocations after adjusting the inflation. The government has proposed to increase allowances for social safety net programmes, but the increase does not adjust the decreased value of the allowance amidst high inflation.  The old-age allowance, for example, has been increased by Tk 100 up from Tk 500, which means that the real value of the allowance decreases by 7 per cent, considering 9 per cent inflation.
The allocation for food subsidy has also been reduced by 19.84 per cent, which will greatly affect the poor. The allocation for agriculture has decreased. Agricultural incentives have been slashed by 47.1 per cent compared with the allocation in the 2024 budget. The allocations for education and health have also been reduced in real value. The nominal increase that the sectors have received will not help ordinary people as a significant amount of the allocations is meant for infrastructure development. People’s out-of-pocket expenditures will, therefore, keep increasing. What is also concerning is that the budget does not propose any guideline on how to contain inflation. The budget proposes to keep inflation down to 6.5 per cent, without giving any direction on how to do that. In the current financial year, the government targeted containing inflation at 6 per cent, but miserably failed. Another major concern is the lack of initiatives for job creation. The budget does not propose any specific measures to create jobs although the unemployment rate, according to conservative official figures, has increased significantly. Excessive government borrowing from the banking sector, with Tk 1.37 trillion proposed, will hinder private-sector growth, which employs more than 85 per cent of the work force.
The budget, therefore, appears not to have addressed real challenges such as inflation and unemployment that people, especially low- and fixed-income people, are faced with. It has also not addressed the concerns of the disadvantaged. The government must, therefore, review the issues before the passage of the budget.