The proposed national budget for the fiscal year 2021-22 placed in parliament on Thursday has failed to make a proper assessment of the impact of the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic. Besides, issues of poverty, job market and the SME sector have been underestimated in the budget, which eventually will lead to limitations in formulating policies, says the South Asian Network for Economic Modeling.
The think-tank, in its reaction to the budget on Saturday said if policy makers remain in their comfort zone during such a crisis, then they will not feel the need to create and implement appropriate policies. The solutions presented seem to be on an ad-hoc basis, rather than an overall planning in response to the pandemic crisis. It also stressed that the recovery of education, health, social security, poverty and inequality needs to be addressed.
Meanwhile, questions have arisen as to whether the budget will be functional in tackling the second wave of coronavirus. After all, there is a gap between presentation of the budget and its implementation. Then again, allocations made in certain sectors are not fully utilised by the end of the year. In the proposed budget, a relatively higher allocation has been given to the health sector, but there is no guarantee that this allocation will be properly utilised. Even the current year’s allocation could not be used due to corruption and irregularities of the concerned ministry’s officials. But unfortunately, no one of the ministry has been held accountable for this.
In his budget speech, the finance minister said 10 crore people will be brought under the vaccination programme, but it will take quite a few years to achieve this if 25 lakh people are vaccinated per month. Besides, there has not been enough data collection about the pandemic from government organisations, although statistics was very important to understand the ground reality. Education is one of the sectors most harmed by the pandemic. But the budget contains no guidelines for tacking the challenges faced by the sector. The proposal to impose a 15 per cent tax on private educational institutions has already been protested by students.
Over the past 50 years, economic disparity has increased in the country. But there was no mention about this in the budget and there is no headache about how to reduce the disparity. We believe proper attention should be given to make common people beneficiaries, instead of catering to those who are already in positions of advantage.
