The finance ministry is expected to allocate a higher amount of fund, over Tk聽5,000 crore, to the Election Commission in the 2025-26 financial year budget for the purpose of holding next national election and local government polls, ministry officials said.
Including the projected allocation to the Election Commission, the FY26 budget outlay is expected to be Tk聽7.9 lakh crore, they said.
Interim government鈥檚 chief adviser Muhammad Yunus in his address to the nation in December past year said that the national election would be held between December 2025 and June 2026.
The Election Commission has sought Tk聽5,922 crore in allocation from the Finance Division under the finance ministry in the July 2025-June 2026 budget for conducting the next national election and local government polls.
Of the amount, Tk聽2,794.55 crore has been sought for the national election while the rest for the local government elections.
EC secretary Akhtar Ahmed told 抖阴精品 on May 21 that the Finance Division was positive regarding the allocation sought since it was connected to the much-talked-about general elections.
The Finance Division has always been generous in allocating fund to the Election Commission for holding national election, said the commission鈥檚 secretary.
Data from the finance ministry showed that the EC was given an allocation of Tk聽1,230 crore in the outgoing financial year (2025-25).
The Finance Division allocated Tk聽4,769 crore to the commission in FY24 featured by the January 7, 2024, flawed general elections boycotted by major political parties.
The finance ministry officials said that the budget for the forthcoming financial year, to be announced on June 2, would aim at stabilising the macro-economy and restoring fiscal discipline for obtaining about 5.5 per cent growth in the gross domestic product in the financial year.
This will be the first budget under the interim government that assumed power on August 8, 2024, after the ouster of authoritarian Awami League regime amid a mass uprising.
To achieve the fiscal goals, the interim government has decided to increase revenue generation and decrease reliance on borrowings from the internal sources mainly from the banking sector to check the crowding out effect.
The fiscal policy will supplement the current monetary policy to bring down the inflation rate to projected 6.5 per cent, said the officials involved with the budget-making process.
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the general inflation rate stood at 9.17 per cent in April 2025, gradually decreasing from 11.38 per cent hit in November 2024.
Economists, however, said that the overall budget financing would be challenging for the interim government as the revenue collection target was 鈥榓mbitious鈥� against the backdrop of lack of capacity of the implementing agencies.
Former World Bank Dhaka Office lead economist Zahid Hussain said that they expected different budget for the forthcoming financial year from the interim government.
鈥楤ut the budget is likely to be same,鈥� he said, indicating the 鈥榟ighly ambitious鈥� planned revenue target.
The finance ministry officials said that the overall revenue generation target would be set at Tk聽5.64 lakh crore with the National Board of Revenue鈥檚 collection target of Tk聽4.99 lakh crore.
Till March of the outgoing financial year (FY25), the revenue board collected Tk聽2.56 lakh crore in taxes against the target of Tk聽3.22 lakh crore.
The less-than-projected revenue collection has been attributed to a slowdown in economic activities because of political uncertainty and inefficiencies of the tax officials.
Finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed has recently said that the overall revenue generation would not be lower than the previous financial year (FY24).
Citing the 2 per cent growth in revenue generation until April (10 months of FY25), the finance adviser hoped that the reform programme initiated in the NBR would bolster the revenue mobilisation in FY26.
The NBR has been spilt into the Revenue Policy Division and the Revenue Management Division through an ordinance amid its failure to meet its revenue collection targets over the past fifty years.
The country鈥檚 tax-to-GDP ratio is about 7.4 per cent, one of the lowest in Asia, against the global average of 16.6 per cent.
Economists mentioned the uncertainty regarding private investments as another big challenge for the interim government for achieving the fiscal goals.
The government expenditure through development projects in the outgoing FY25 is not encouraging as only 41.31 per cent of the annual development programme was spent in 10 months, the lowest in a decade.
M Masrur Reaz, chairman of the Policy Exchange Bangladesh, said that a better implementation of the ADP would encourage the private sector to make more investments.
Increasing both public and private investments in real economy is still a big challenge, he said.
Economists said that the interim government needed extra efforts to improve the implementation rate of the ADP set at Tk聽2,30,000 crore for FY26.
The new ADP is Tk 14,000 crore higher than the revised ADP of Tk聽2,16,000 crore for FY25.
The finance ministry officials said that the implementation of the projected ADP that, according to them is a small one, would also help the Finance Division keep the budget deficit below 4 per cent of the gross domestic product.
The GDP size is likely to be projected at Tk聽62,44,578 crore for FY26.
In FY25, the GDP size was projected at Tk聽55,97,414 crore with 6.8 per cent growth (later revised down to 5.2 per cent) by the ousted AL regime in its last budget announced in June 2024.
