Amidst the steep rise in commodity prices, and a sky-high aspiration of sustaining GDP growth, what are the major challenges of creating an effective budget for Bangladesh this year? What should we look for from the FY 23-24 budget?

Private sector credit growth in Bangladesh dropped to a 14-month low of 11.23 per cent in April owing to weak credit demand amid the current business slowdown, official figures showed.  

The government is going to unveil a Tk 7,61,785 crore budget for the next fiscal year on Thursday, setting containment of high inflation as a major target.

The government has to invest in good education; a meagre two percent of the nation’s GDP is not going to create a "Smart Bangladesh."

Bangladesh’s public expenditure is not growing in keeping pace with the steadily expanding economy as it struggles to raise adequate revenues, thus failing to ensure full implementation of development programmes and provide expected services to its citizens.  

The tax collection growth fell further in April, making it tougher for the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to attain its goal of raising Tk 370,000 crore in the current fiscal year. 

The economy is estimated to have expanded at a slower-than-expected pace in 2022-23, said the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) yesterday, a figure that analysts describe as good in view of elevated inflation, slowing exports and remittances and the ongoing pressure on the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

Private sector credit growth in Bangladesh slipped to a 12-month low of 12.03 per cent in March, a development that may hurt GDP growth and job creation. 

It seems the Bangladesh economy is stuck in a time warp, going by the latest edition of the Labour Force Survey unveiled yesterday.

The current low revenue base in Bangladesh could be further undermined by the measures taken in the budget for FY2023, including corporate tax cuts, American credit rating agency Fitch said in its latest report.

Specific policy incentives are needed to stimulate the economy and revive the labour market.

An economy without an independent source of data is like an aircraft flying without its airspeed sensors.

Bangladesh Bank yesterday substantially relaxed the policy for rescheduling defaulted loans, allowing defaulters to repay term loans over a maximum period of eight years whereas it was previously two years.

The Bangladesh Bank (BB) has revealed its Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) for the period of July-December 2022 at a time when the country, and the world, is going through tough economic challenges.

The Bangladesh government has set a target of 7.5 per cent growth of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the upcoming fiscal year of 2022-23 beginning from July.

The International Monetary Fund has revised down its economic growth projection for Bangladesh to 6.4 percent for the current fiscal year largely because of Russia-Ukraine war and supply chain disruptions.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today said the GDP growth of the country would be higher than the government's estimate, not only the World Bank's projection.

The central bank yesterday unveiled a cautiously optimistic monetary policy for the second half of the fiscal year, keeping room to provide adequate supply of quality credit to support the growth and inflation targets.

Budget implementation capacity of Bangladesh has been falling consistently for the last seven fiscal years, exposing poor capacity of government agencies, The Daily Star reported on June 4, 2018. Despite a sustained increase in GDP growth rate for over a decade, the implementing capacity has dropped from 97 percent in 2010-11 to a mere 78 percent in 2016-17, it further adds.

Bangladesh has become one of Asia's most remarkable and unexpected success stories in recent years. Once one of the poorest regions of Pakistan, Bangladesh remained an economic basket case—wracked by poverty and famine—for many years after independence in 1971. In fact, by 2006, conditions seemed so hopeless that when Bangladesh registered faster growth than Pakistan, it was dismissed as a fluke.