The Finance Division on Thursday warned that if ministries and divisions failed to comply with the budget implementation measures, they would face fund suspension, officials said.
The fund suspension will be imposed from the second quarter of the 2025-26 financial year if the ministries and divisions fail to submit respective budget implementation plans by the first quarter or the July-September period.
The ministries and divisions will also face the suspension of fund in the last quarter if they fail to spend 60 per cent of the budgetary allocation in the first three quarters, according to a Finance Division circular posted on its web site on Thursday.
Asking the ministries and divisions to submit the budget implementation plans by September 30, the Finance Division also said that the budget implementation status should be submitted in the first month of every quarter.
Finance Division officials said that decision of fund suspension was a new step aiming at increasing the implementation rate of budget.
The national budget implementation rate in Bangladesh has historically been lower than the full annual allocation, averaging 81-86 per cent between the financial year of 2008-09 and 2023-24.
In FY2023-24, the rate dropped to 79 per cent amid challenges, including ambitious development expenditure target, limited government capacity to spend and a failure to meet revenue collection target.
The officials said that complying with the directive by the ministries and divisions would ensure maintaining fiscal discipline and averting imbalance between income and expenditure.
They said that lack of proper plan caused imbalance between income and expenditure and increased borrowing costs to meet the revenue shortfall.
Finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed while announcing the first budget of the interim government in past June said that Tk聽96,000 crore in loans would be taken from external sources and Tk聽1.25 lakh crore in loans from the domestic sources to meet the budget deficit in FY26.
The national budget with an overall expenditure outlay of Tk聽7.9 lakh crore targets the revenue collection at Tk聽5.64 lakh crore.
