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Download PDF Finance Adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam yesterday dismissed any controversy or constitutional crisis over budgeting by the interim government despite the fact that the next budget will not get through a parliament.
The adviser who is authoring the budget said: “Budget is just a statement of earning and expenditure of the nation; this can pass through an ordinance.”
Mirza Aziz said this while talking to the press after the Resource Committee Meeting at his office where officials concerned were present for the exercise of resource assessment and allocation for the upcoming budget for 2007-08.
This is for the first time in Bangladesh’s history that a neutral, nonpolitical caretaker government is going to present a full-fledged national budget.
However, there is the precedent of budget making and placing without parliament on two different occasions. Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud placed a three-month budget under the 1996 caretaker government. And at the early stage of Ziaur Rahman’s rule, a full-fledged budget was presented outside parliament.
Without giving any specific information about subsidy in the next fiscal year’s budget, Mirza Aziz said there is a possibility of increasing subsidy to the agriculture sector.
The adviser also agreed that revenue collection would suffer a shortfall this fiscal year, but it would be 12 percent higher than the last fiscal year’s mark.
He said yesterday’s meeting decided that transparency and accountability will be ensured in public spending.
About the size and other related issues of the budget, he said: “It is not finalised yet. After initial discussions, we’ll send it to the Council of Advisers for approval.”
He said that for the next fiscal year the government has fixed GDP growth at 7 percent and inflation rate at 6.5 percent.
“Taking those into consideration, we will try to increase the revenue-GDP ratio and expand the revenue after counting foreign resources and deficit financing,” he said.
From the meeting the government has decided to expand the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) website to infuse transparency in public expenditure.
“There is an allegation that government did not maintain balance in public expenditure in different regions of the country. On the IMED website we will put all the information about the expenditure region-wise and people will monitor the expenditure,” he said.
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