BSS, Dhaka :Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith is placing the national budget for 2015-16 financial year (FY16) later this week, with a new approach by shifting the major focus of his fiscal policy on human resource development as a catalyst of achieving higher growth trajectory. Muhith, however, said that the different approach would not be a shift from the target of addressing infrastructure, gas and power. The approach would be towards addressing further the development in education, health and other social sectors as achieving higher growth in future hinges on human resource development. The minister already hinted that the target for GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth would be set at 7.2 to 7.3 percent for FY16 when he would focus on human resource development for driving economy to a higher growth trajectory. He said power and transportation would be in the priority list for the next financial year too, but with human resource development getting special attention. Muhith also said that the coming budget would pave the way for implementing ongoing mega projects like the Padma Bridge, metro rail and Moghbazar-Mouchak flyover. The finance minister will also continue focusing on poverty reducing initiatives, with substantial allocations for employment generation and social safety-net. As the poverty rate already fell below 20.0 percent, Muhith is expecting the FY16 budget and the fiscal policy would be a catalyst of making Bangladesh poverty-free in near future. The minister is also optimistic about the rapid increase in domestic resource mobilisation, which was over 2.0 percent in the past five years, significantly higher than before. He told journalists earlier that the strong growth in internal resource mobilisation would drive the size of the national budget to Taka 5 lakh crore in 2018. The size of the FY16 budget, however, would be around three lakh crore, significantly higher than the 2 lakh 50 thousand and 560 crore of FY15. The National Economic Council (NEC) also approved an amount of Taka 97,000 crore for the Annual Development Programme (ADP) for FY16. The allocation is 29.33 percent higher than the revised ADP of the current fiscal year, and 20.77 per cent higher than the original ADP of the current fiscal. The ADP prioritised the development of country’s communication systems, particularly the Padma Multipurpose Bridge (PMB) project. Last year, the finance minister announced that the budget would have mechanism and dynamism for luring growth fostering investment and reducing income disparity to bring more people out of poverty. This year, he would draw the salient feature of the budget with the major targets of raising GDP growth with maintaining price stability, enhancing the rate of investment, and improving the power and energy, and physical infrastructure further with special attention to human resources development.
