Inflation, energy costs, global uncertainty key challenges for budget: Jamaat

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, the main opposition party in parliament, on Friday identified rising energy costs, persistently high inflation, and growing global geopolitical and economic uncertainties as the three biggest challenges to implementing the proposed national budget for FY27.

“These three factors would make it very difficult for the government to achieve both its budget implementation and revenue collection targets,”  

Mia Golam Porwar, secretary general of Jamaat, said while addressing a press conference at the party’s central office in Moghbazar, Dhaka.

The BNP-led government on Thursday placed the proposed national budget of Tk9.38 lakh crore during the budgetary session of the 13th parliament, putting its highest importance on containing the inflationary pressure on the people.

In a post-budget formal reaction, Golam Porwar described it as the largest deficit budget in the country’s history, which will promote corruption and hooliganism, and urged the government to place an investment-friendly revised budget for the greater interest of the nation.

The gas and fuel prices have been increased in phases in the last three months since the government assumed power, while the electricity price has also been increased, Porwar said, adding that meeting the rising costs in the sector in light of the proposed budget will be the main challenge for the government.

“This budget is highly debt-dependent, highly ambitious and impractical,” he said, adding that a target of collecting Tk6.29 lakh crore in revenue has been set in the proposed national budget, but there is no clear clarification on how the target will be achieved.

Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury, in his budget speech, did not mention from which sources he would manage the budgetary shortfall of Tk236,250 crore, he said.

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The people of the post-July uprising expected that the government would place a pro-people, well-planned, visionary and implementable national budget, but the budget is void of their hopes and aspirations and a clear message of improving their lives and living standards, he said.

The national budget did not reflect any effective measures to reform the public administration and the Anti-Corruption Commission to free them from corruption and to ensure an accountable state structure, he said.

The target of achieving a 6.5% GDP growth has been set in the proposed budget, but it will be challenging for the government due to persistent corruption, unsolicited interference by ruling party men and the government's discriminatory policies, he said.

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