Rejaul Karim Byron

Every cloud has a silver lining and so has the Covid-19 pandemic. It saved the government and taxpayers around Tk 2,500 crore since March last year.

Just a day after parliament passed the budget, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday sought an additional assistance from Asian Development Bank (ADB) as the government looks to use a record amount in foreign aid in fiscal 2021-22.

Implementation of government development projects by ministries and divisions suffers years of delays as they, in most cases, are formulated without proper feasibility studies and technical designs.

The government is working to take necessary measures to provide cash assistance and food, including rice, edible oil and other commodities to poor who are affected during the countrywide “strict lockdown” to be imposed from Thursday.

The amnesty to legalise undisclosed income without any question and on payment of 10 per cent tax is likely to continue in the upcoming fiscal year for individuals who will make a new investment to set up factories, officials said.

Bangladesh’s historically low foreign direct investment, which had dropped 10.8 percent to $2.6 billion last year, is unlikely to pick up in the near future as investment commitments remain lukewarm, according to the UNCTAD.

Despite a decline in the number of wholesale and retail trade units in Bangladesh, employment in the sector nearly trebled to 1.41 crore in the past decade, according to the provisional data of the Wholesale and Retail Trade Survey 2020.

Funds parked by Bangladeshi individuals and firms in Swiss banks dropped 6.6 percent to 563 million Swiss francs (about Tk 5,215 crore) in 2020, the third year in a row in which it declined.

The health ministry’s development spending was stuck at a disappointing level even after 11 months of the outgoing fiscal year for its failure to accelerate expenditures when the public needed the most.

In circuses, whenever artists perform the tightrope walking stunt, underneath them are wide nets to prevent them from falling to the ground and avoiding potentially life-threatening injuries -- lest they lose their balance on the thin rope and falls over.

It is universally acknowledged that the global coronavirus pandemic has widened inequalities in nations all over -- including Bangladesh.

The troubled BASIC Bank is heading for a merger with the better-performing Bangladesh Development Bank Limited (BDBL) as part of the government’s efforts to improve the overall health of the country’s state banks, which have historically been sitting on a heavy pile of soured credit.

The World Bank yesterday upgraded Bangladesh’s GDP growth forecast for this fiscal year by 2 percentage points to 3.6 percent, making it the second best-performing economy in South Asia behind the Maldives.

Baffling -- is how one would describe the parliamentary session in which the Tk 13,987.3 crore supplementary budget for fiscal 2020-21 was passed.

The opportunity to whiten black money without any question from authorities regarding its source, which was offered by the government in the current fiscal year, is not going to continue the next fiscal year 2021-22.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has stuck to his strategy of making higher allocation for the health sector to combat the pandemic, protect the poor and businesses, and speed up economic recovery.

Bangladesh’s currency swap agreement with Sri Lanka to replenish the island nation’s fast-depleting foreign reserves and ease pressure on its exchange rate will be completed by next month, according to a top official of Bangladesh Bank.

Today, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal unveils his third budget, which coincidentally is the 50th fiscal plan of independent Bangladesh.

The government in last year’s budget gave priority to several crucial sectors to protect people and their livelihoods amid the pandemic, but it could not achieve the desired results due to the Covid second wave and hurdles in implementing its initiatives.

“Cuts, cuts, cuts!” -- would be the chorus of Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal’s third budget speech that he is due to deliver in the parliament tomorrow.