Staff Reporter :
Terming the proposed budget of 2020-21 FY traditional, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a leading think tank, on Friday said alleviating poverty, discrimination and creating employment should have been given priority in the budget instead of GDP growth.
The think tank came up with the observation at a virtual press briefing on the proposed FY2020-21 national budget on Friday. “We should give the highest priority to lives and livelihood of people. We have to spend more to tackle the coronavirus situation. But there is a doubt over revenue collection by NBR,” Dr Fahmida Khatun, Executive Director, CPD said at an online briefing. She also that the budget is traditional and doesn’t have guidelines to address different issues caused by coronavirus outbreak . CPD on Thursday said the proposed budget for 2020-21 was announced with a ‘weak structure’ as resource collection target in the budget is not realistic amid the existing situation of Covid-19. Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal placed the proposed budget of Tk 568,000 crore in Parliament on Thursday. The revenue collection target has been set at Tk378,000 crore. Of the amount, NBR has been tasked with realising a revenue collection target of Tk330,000 crore, The non-NBR revenue collection target is Tk15,000 crore, while the non-tax revenue collection goal is Tk33,000 crore.
