Secretary General of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, Professor Mia Ghulam Porwar has issued the following statement on 16 July 2020 terming the proposed budget for 2024-25 fiscal year as a huge loan based fantasy luxury. He said this in a statement on Thursday to react to the budget.
Mia Golam Parwar said the present government has captured power again through a dummy election snatching people’s voting rights. The unrealistic budget presented by the government in parliament on Thursday has no direction to overcome the economic crisis that is beneficial for the people of the country. The finance minister presented the budget titled ‘Pledge to build a happy, prosperous, developed and smart Bangladesh’ in the parliament. In reality, instead of making Bangladesh happy and prosperous, the present government has made arrangements to cripple the country economically instead of enriching Bangladesh through corruption and misrule and arranging money laundering abroad and patronizing the corrupt people.
He said the proposed budget is 11.56 percent higher than the revised budget for the fiscal year 2023-24. This time the expenditure has increased to Tk 82,582 crore. The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has set a revenue target of Tk 495,000 crore to meet the huge expenditure. To achieve this, Tk 66,000 crore more will have to be collected from the current revised budget. Economists believe that this is a big challenge. The revenue target in the budget has been set at Tk 5,41,000 crore.
The target of taking the remaining Tk 2 lakh 56 thousand crore has been set. The economic growth target for the current fiscal year has been set at more than 7 percent. The target for the next fiscal year may be 6.75 percent.
Golam Parwar said the income limit of individuals has been kept in the budget like last year, which is not acceptable. The income tax limit for high-income people has been increased from 25 per cent to 30 per cent. Extensive changes have been made in VAT and import duty to increase revenue. Tax holiday and VAT exemption facilities for local industries have been compressed. This will increase the production cost of domestic products. Besides, duty on import of AC and LED manufacturing materials has been increased. As a result, the price of electrical items including AC and TV will increase. Supplementary duty on mobile phone talk and internet usage has been increased. This will increase consumer spending. In the budget, there is an opportunity to whiten undisclosed money i.e. black money by paying 15 percent tax. Which is not supportable in any way.
He also said that the statistics and policy sentences uttered by the finance minister in the budget do not match the reality. There is no real plan and steps to solve the prevailing economic crisis in the country. The present government could not implement even half of the budgets presented for 2023 and 2024. Instead of implementing the mega project, they looted it. The finance minister could not give any direction in the budget to prevent bank looting, money laundering abroad, corruption in the financial sector including the share market.
Jamaat Secretary General said, the proposed budget of the finance minister is just a budget to impose additional tax on the people. This budget will not bring any benefit to the country and its people. The countrymen are rejecting the proposed budget that is against the public interest.