Finance Minister AMA Muhith BBN file photo
Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN) - The outlay of the budget for the next fiscal year (FY) 2018-2019 could be BDT 4.68 trillion, Finance Minister of Bangladesh AMA Muhith said on Sunday.
"We announced Taka 400,266 crore budget for current fiscal. Revised budget for the current fiscal will be Taka 371,000 crore. We’ve projected Taka 4,68,000 crore for the next fiscal," he told journalists after coordination council meeting and Budget Monitoring and Resource Committee (BMRC) meeting at the Finance Ministry in the capital Dhaka,
Mentioning the figure as the initial indicator, the minister said the actual figure of the next budget will be fixed on February, 2018.
"FY19 budget will be the last budget for this tenure of the present government. So I thought that we should start well tune on that budget right now," he explained. "There will no new initiative in the next budget. It will not be either an ambitious budget.”
The minister said education will be the most priority sector in the next budget as the government will give more emphasis on manpower development.
This fiscal, he said the implementation performance of Annual Development Programme (ADP) is very good, so that the budget implementation performance is slightly better than the previous fiscal.
Responding to a question, he said, the revenue collection performance is also better than previous fiscal. "So far the revenue collection is ok. Last fiscal, the growth of revenue collection was 11 per cent. This fiscal, we expected the growth will be 13 per cent.”
He also said the number of taxpayers has enormously increased due to the government's time befitting initiatives to expedite the revenue collection. "We set a target to increase the number of taxpayers to 2.5 million. But the number has increased to 3.2 million,”
Referring to Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, the finance minister said despite the losses of crops, the GDP growth will exceed 7.4 per cent this fiscal.
BBN/SSR/AD