A long, boring, put-me-to-sleep speech in June marks out that YES! this is that time of the year again. Budget! People!! Budget!!!. Honestly, I guess the common folk was so tired of all the ‘excitement’ that even the anxiety of the people seemed to have gone numb. And when the Finance Advisor claimed inflation in Bangladesh was 6.9% (?!!!?) I knew we are staring at the wall…again.
A budget of taka 999.62 Billion -Â its not that there were no points to be satisfied about such a huge budget. For the first time in many a years did we see the Govt. trying to trim down its Annual Development Plan (ADP) budget. And why not? If we look at statistics of percentages of ADP actually being expensed (I am talking ‘expensed’ people, the point of actual ‘utilization’ is still far off) is embarassingly low. Which brings us to the logical thought of incompetent people tasked at doing their job properly.
I also see the need for taking out the VAT and certain other taxes for intermediary products. It was a long standing, valid demand from the business commuities, especially benficial for industries just starting up.
What I don’t get is the need to give this 20% raise/(you can call it whatever) to Govt. employees. The amount will be so low for most of the 3rd and 4th level public servants that this will do very little for them in the scenario of inflation, 13.2%Â as judged by Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB). Increased domestic borrowing to meet the need for this huge budget is not going to be of any help as well.
Grudges aside, the most important point which really needs to be addressed asap is that when an elected form of Government will arise to implement the later six months (provided if everything goes according to the publicly stated plan) will they do it? All these money talks and long debates and comments are of no use if the plan is not implemented!!! It is Money for Nothing actually. So let me go and jack up to the Direstraits tune while those of you interested can go and check out the speech here. A brief can be checked up here.
