Business Desk :
Bangladesh may face internal and external shocks if in the upcoming budget it does not consider issues related to the Russia-Ukraine war, recovery of economies from Covid-19 pandemic and the latest collapse of the Lankan economy, experts said on Saturday.
They spoke at a discussion on “Macro Economy: Expectation from the national budget 2022-23”, jointly organised by the Economic Reporters Forum (ERF) and Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) at the ICAB office in the capital. In the last 10 months, the balance of payment (BoP) was more than $10 billion when the import surged to meet the growing demand, which already grew over 54 percent year-on-year.
At the end of the fiscal year, the BoP will hit $20 billion whereas historically it hovered between $7 billion and $8 billion.
Considering the current global scenario, the BoP at $20 billion is unusual at this moment, said Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute.So considering the current global context the government should take a proactive and pre-emptive decision in the upcoming budget so that the externalities can be offset by taking wise decisions, he said.
Md Shahadat Hossain, president of the ICAB; Asif Ibrahim, chairman of the Chittagong Stock Exchange; Md Eunusur Rahman, chairman of the Dhaka Stock Exchange, and Sharmeen Rinvy, president of the ERF, also spoke.
