Finance Minister AMA Muhith has admitted that the proposed national budget for the fiscal 2014-15 is highly ambitious but achievable. Vowing to implement the budget, he said that he likes presenting ambitious budget because of the excellent achievements in the recent years.
The minister also made it clear that the 2014-15 budget would have no provision to legalise black money.
He said these while responding to queries of reporters at a post-budget press conference at Osmani Memorial Auditorium in the city on Friday afternoon, a day after placing the budget proposal in the Parliament on Thursday.
Earlier, in the morning, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) at a press conference said that the proposed budget is luxurious and over ambitious, and its implementation is not possible. It also criticised the minister for his silence on the issue of whitening of black money in the budget speech.
In his reaction, AMA Muhith said, “It is the characteristic of the present government to formulate high ambitious budget. I have been presenting high ambitious budgets from the first year (2009) of Awami League government and the achievement has been excellent.”
About black money, he said, “There will be no more chance for converting black money into white. I did not mention the matter in the budget speech, as there will be no scope to whiten black money in the budget.”
The minister said the government had earlier offered the opportunity to legalise black money for investing in stock market and housing sector. “Tk. 34 crore has been whitened in the last budget. From that point of view, we can say that there is no black money in the country,” he said. He, however, said that black money remains in other ways in the country.
AMA Muhith said the achievement of the budget for the fiscal 2013-14 would mark a fall a bit due to political instability that prevailed over several months in 2013. He hoped that the political instability cannot harm the implementation of the national budget for the fiscal year 2014-15. He urged the politicians to practice tolerance and not to launch anarchic programme.
The government will be able to implement Tk. 2,50,506 crore budget without any significant deficit as there will be no shortfall in foreign aid flow, he said. He also ruled out any possibility of heavy borrowing from the banking sector to meet the tentative deficit of around 5 percent. “The deficit has been lower than five percent for the budgets. I placed in the past; and that is an appropriate deficit,” he said.
About collection of revenue from the income tax, Muhith said, “We can’t expect too much from individual taxpayers. The current tax-free income ceiling is Tk 220,000. But what is the gross income in Bangladesh?” Tax-free income for individual tax payers in other countries is more than Bangladesh. The amount is not changed every year. We had thought to keep this year’s fixed amount unchanged for at least 10 years.”
Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury, Planning Minister AHM Mostofa Kamal, Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu, State Minister for Finance MA Mannan, Chairman of the National Board of Revenue’s (NBR) Ghulam Hussain and Governor of Bangladesh Bank Dr Atiur Rahman were also present at the press conference.
AHM Mostofa Kamal said that the implementation of the big budget would not be a problem, because the government bodies have proven themselves efficient to collect the expected revenue to finance the budget. He also said that one of the positive outcomes of formulating and implementing big budgets is that the government’s spending capacity has doubled since 2009.
He hoped that they can achieve the growth target in private sector investment. The investor in private sectors will come back, he added.
MA Mannan supported the claim of the finance minister, saying that the country has seen calmness and stability in the post-election time, so the budget will be well implemented.
