Health, education, safety net, agriculture should get priority in next budget: SANEM

Health, education, social safety net and agricultural sectors should get priority in the next budget for quick recovery of health of the general mass and the economy as a whole, according to the South Asian Network for Economic Modeling (SANEM).
Only 0.92 per cent of the country's gross domestic product was spent for the health sector, which is too low, the research organisation said today in a webinar.
The pandemic has exposed the extreme vulnerability of the health sector, it added.
More dismal picture of the health sector is exposed when the expenditure from the total yearly allocation is calculated.
Only 28.7 per cent of the health allocation was spent in between July and April in the outgoing
budget whereas the figure stood at 72.3 per cent in the whole 2019-20 fiscal year, SANEM added