News Desk :
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said on Friday that the proposed budget for fiscal year 2021-22 is business-friendly and it focused on increase production and create more employment opportunities,
“The budget is business-friendly and businesses will get various opportunities from it. Production will increase from the budgetary measures. If production is increased then it will also increase employment, as production is impossible without manpower,” the minister said in the virtual post-budget press briefing arranged a day after he announced the national budget for 2021-22 fiscal year.
The finance minister said, “Businessmen are talking about a business-friendly budget. The term business is flexible job, it cannot be fixed. People’s needs change every time. Changes come to businessmen to meet the demand. Change also comes to move them forward. So it can never be fixed.”
He said, “We have to see what our situation demands, what the whole world is doing. If the developed world lags behind, we will not be able to move forward. Because through the developed world but we are prosperous. That is what the US economy teaches us today, we are connected to each other.”
The finance minister presented the proposed budget, titled “Protecting lives and livelihoods for the fiscal year 2021-22,” in parliament on Thursday.
The size of the budget has been proposed at Tk603,681 crore.
Finance Minister also expressed hope that the deduction of tax rate in the proposed budget for fiscal 2021-22 will increase the revenue collection.
Responding to a question on tax exemptions in the budget, he said, “We aim to simplify the law. We sincerely believe that if can simplify the law and involve tax payers in this work, then the revenue generation will be increased a lot.”
“Many countries of the world tried to increase revenue generation. Even the United States once had a 75 percent tax rate, which is no longer the case. Everyone tried to figure out whether to collect more taxes.”
He further said, “We think if we gradually reduce the rate of revenue, our collection will increase. Tax was slashed, we believe ‘we’ll be the winner’. The tax rate has been reduced and hopefully our revenue collection will increase further.”
Responding to another question, Kamal said that the government had no information about the number of people who slipped down the poverty line in Bangladesh because of the Covid induced economic shocks.
He said they would know the number of such people after getting information from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
He said that BBS was working on the issue.
The finance minister also expressed his disappointment over the corruption and slow progress of the development projects in the health sector of Bangladesh.
“Changes are very imperative for the health sector,” he said while answering a question on the abysmal state of the sector in the virtual press conference.
