Prothom Alo
We are going through the Covid-19 pandemic. Nothing could damage our life, livelihood and economy in all these years as Covid-19 did. That’s why the budget should also have been composed prioritising the Covid-19 situation. But I did not see any specific plan in the proposed budget in this regard.
In the current fiscal, a fund of Tk 100 billion (10,000 crore) was formed for the health sector but this could not be spent in entirety. A fund of same amount of money has been proposed for the next fiscal. Instead of keeping a lump sum, authorities should have moved towards implementing plans. As many as 240 million (24 crore) doses of vaccines have to be administered to 120 million (12 crore) people. It would take a few years to cover that number of people at the current speed of administering the vaccines. Does that mean we will have to live with Covid in the next few years? What’s this thought of growth instead of administering Covid vaccines? There’d be no benefit of talking about seven or eight per cent of GDP growth without administering vaccines.
Around 2 million to 2.5 million vaccines have to be administered in a day, not in a month. If not, the situation could worsen like that of India. We hoped the finance minister would give due importance to this. He said many things but I am disappointed for the lack of a clear roadmap in this regard.
I would say the size of the budget is small in comparison with the economy. The size is even smaller than that of 1972 if we take GDP into account. The proposed budget is 17 per cent of the GDP though the achievement would likely to be 15 per cent. Economic history says the size of budget cannot increase if national income does not increase alongside development. The ratio of our tax-GDP is still only 8 per cent.
However, proposed allocations in the budget are more practical than the last time. For example, the allocation in social safety net has been increased. But nothing has been kept for the people became new poor due to the fallout of Covid-19. They are not the people who would seek allowances. Another thing is, the rate of interest of savings paper could be decreased by half per cent every year through proper management of cash and loan. But the policy makers are silent just because of the vested quarter.
The amount of tax exemption is very high this time. Another thing is that many people have become poor because of expenditure on medical treatment. Bangladesh could not come up with any measures to save people from this situation over the last 50 years. This is unfortunate.
* Ahsan H Mansur is the executive director of PRI. This article, originally published in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo, has been rewritten in English by Shameem Reza
