The government on Monday decided to revise down the country鈥檚 gross domestic product growth to 5 per cent from 5.5 per cent for the 2025-26 financial year.
It also made upward revision of inflation to 7 per cent from the original 6.5 per cent set by the finance adviser in the FY26 national budget announced in June, said officials.
The officials said that the decisions were made at a joint-meeting of the coordination council and the budget management and resource committee on the day.
Presided over by finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed, the online meeting also set an initial estimate to cut the size of the overall budget by聽 Tk 20,000 crore from Tk 7.9 lakh crore, said the officials.
While reviewing the overall economic situation in the past four months (July-October) of the FY26, the coordination council found that slow easing in inflation had been the biggest worry ahead of the national election planned to be held in February 2026.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics recorded the rate of inflation at 8.17 per cent in October, slightly down from 8.36 per cent in September.
The 12-month inflation between November 2024 and October 2025 has been recorded at 9.22, showing that inflation eased slowly after hitting double digit over the past two years.
The National Board of Revenue has been asked to bolster revenue generation further after it achieved 20 per cent growth in the first quarter or the July-September period of FY26.
In the quarter, the annual development programme implementation rate was 5.09 per cent compared with 4.75 per cent in the same period of the past financial year marked by the ouster of the Awami League regime amid a mass uprising and a slowdown in the overall economic activities.
With a host of things related to the budget and the fiscal measures depending on the next general election and the new government, the coordination council and the budget management committee stressed the need for keeping options so that the new government can easily bring about changes in line with its policy, said the officials.
The officials said that the next meeting of the committees would be held in March or April 2026.
Until then, the finance ministry has set a provisional target of 6 per cent growth rate for GDP in FY27 and inflation at 6 per cent for the next financial year.
