Muhith to place FY17 budget today

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith is set to unveil the national budget for 2016-17 financial year (FY17) at the Jatiya Sangsad (JS) at 3pm this afternoon.

This will be the country's 45th budget and the 17th of the Awami League government while the 10th for Muhith.

Muhith, however, is the first finance minister who is placing the national budget for the eighth time in a row since 2009.

While placing the budget for 2015-16 fiscal (FY16) at the parliament last year on June 4, the finance minister said political stability would be the "sine qua non" for achieving economic goals.

He also called upon the political parties to refrain from violence and subversive activities and extent their supports to the government's initiatives toward prosperity.

The country in the outgoing financial year did not see any bigger trouble in the political front while economy showed strength by attaining record reserve, higher than targeted GDP growth and lower rate of inflation.

Last year the finance minister said that the new budget would be the catalyst for taking the country to a higher growth trajectory. Setting the GDP target at 7.0 percent, he said the industry and service sectors on the supply-side; and consumer spending and public and private investment on the demand-side, would be the drivers of the higher growth.

Eventually, the country saw a strong supply-demand scenario in the outgoing fiscal when export was steady and import was mostly for capital machinery and export supporting preliminary goods.

Referring to the 7th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), the finance minister in his last budget speech said that the GDP growth would gradually be raised to 8 percent by 2019-20.

For attaining the higher growth rate, he said the growth rates of the agriculture, industry and services sectors need to be accelerated to 3.5,12.5 and 7.0 percent respectively.

The agriculture sector last year became stronger as the country had another bumper production of staple crop and record reduction in non-crop agriculture sector like vegetable and fisheries.

Muhith, however, admitted that there were some unmet targets of the 6th five year plan which required further attention.

Against this backdrop, the finance minister would draw a roadmap in the next budget speech to attain the unmet targets for higher GDP growth.

The minister already hinted that the budget size for the next fiscal year would be about Taka 3,40,000 crore as the fiscal outlay would keep a provision for financing some mega projects while it would make increased allocation for development projects in the coming fiscal.

The next budget would also have some other special features those are designed in line with the government's target of promoting the country to middle-income group by 2021.

There will have a set of proposals for reforming further the country's revenue authorities by introducing new VAT (value added tax) law, custom law and automation of the major services of the National Board of Revenue (NBR)so the government could mobilise more internal resources and keep the budget deficit within 5.0 percent.

The proposed budget would also have a strategy to expand the tax base by bringing potential taxpayers under the tax net. There are now around 17 lakh TIN (Tax Identification Number) holders. Among them, nearly 12 lakh submit their income tax returns. The government has a target to raise the number of active taxpayers to 30 lakh in next four years.

Like previous year, the budget this year too will be presented on PowerPoint and will be made available on the website of the finance department at www.mof.gov.bd.

The budget documents will also be available at www.bangladesh.gov.bd, www.nbr-bd.org, www.plancomm.gov.bd, www.imed.gov.bd, www.bdpressinform.org and www.pmo.gov.bd and at the BSS website www.bssnews.net.

Any person or organisation at home and abroad can send their feedback, opinion or recommendation by filling up a form after downloading it from the website.

The finance minister will address a post budget press conference at the Osmani Memorial Auditorium on June 3 at 4pm on Friday.

Source: BSS.