Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh Awami League has welcomed the proposed national budget for the fiscal year 2019-20 while others political parties, including BNP, termed it as deficit dependent budget.
The political parties also termed the budget as loan dependent, unrealistic and impossible to implement.
Awami League on Thursday evening held a rally in front of the party’s central office at Bangabandhu Avenue and later brought out a welcome procession on the city streets. Central and Dhaka city leaders, workers and activists participated in the procession. BNP Standing Committee Member Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, in budget reaction, said that the government has kept Tk 145,380 crore deficit in the proposed national budget for the fiscal 2019-20, which will be realised from the people anyhow.
“People will be sufferers to meet the budget deficit. The government will fill up the deficiency through collecting money either in hiking gas or electricity price,” Amir Khasru said in his impromptu budget reaction.
Amir Khasru was talking to reporters at his Banani office soon after the Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal placed the national budget for 2019-20 fiscal.
Claiming the budget as big, the BNP leader said that the budget would affect the daily life of people adversely.
He said, “The government held the December 30 national election keeping people out of the election process and also placed the national budget for the fiscal 2019-20 following the same path.”
“The government has confined the country’s entire economy,” Amir Khasru, also a former commerce minister, said.
Zaker Party Chairman Pirzada Mostafa Amir Faisal said the proposed national budget as a ‘challenging budget.’
He said, “This budget happens to be the largest budget in our country’s history, and it carries with it multifarious challenges.”
“The projected GDP growth rate has been fixed at 8.2 per cent – which is promising. From the beginning, the government must remain wary and more active in materializing the goals set for revenue earnings to meet the estimated expenditures in this large-scale budget.
Jamaat-e-Islam’s Secretary General Dr Shafiqur Rahman in statement said, the proposed national budget is unrealistic and there is no good news for middle and lower income group of people.
He said, the government failed to implement the outgoing budget and the proposed budget will meet the similar fate.
Meanwhile, leaders of the ruling Awami League’s alliance partners – Rashed Khan Menon, President of Workers Party, Mainuddin Khan Badal, President of Jasad (faction) and Hasanul Haque Inu, President of Jasad-also expressed their instant reaction over proposed national budget after coming out the session yesterday.
Rashed Khan Menon thinks that nothing has been said clearly in the budget about the mass people, workers, farmers, entrepreneurs and women who are men behind the development of the country.
Even, there is no indication about redistribution of wealth, he added.
Menon said wealth is being accumulated in the hands of richer section of the society. It will create imbalance in the society, he added.
Mainuddin Khan Badal, commenting on the just announced proposed budget said, it seems to him that dreaming and reality are two different things.
Inu said in a reaction said, “The proposed national budget is implement-able. We have also been able to implement national budgets in the last ten years. We have also been successful in the overall economic management.”
