Speakers in a discussion on Monday expressed dissatisfaction over the preparations for the upcoming national budget with flawed assumptions of the gross domestic product made by the Awami League regime ousted by a popular uprising in the past year.
They were also critical of the interim government that assumed power on August 8, 2024 for its reliance on bureaucrats instead of politicians and chamber leaders to take policy decisions on politics, economy, and social issues over the past nine months.
They observed that the interim government had already shown signs of deviation from its main mandate of arranging the next general elections, but it was dealing with sensitive issues like port management, providing a corridor to the Rakhine State and running the proposed Revenue Policy Division by bureaucrats.
鈥楾he new division should be run by policy makers, not bureaucrats,鈥� said Bangladesh Nationalist Party standing committee member Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury during a discussion organised by the Citizens Platform for SDGs at a hotel in the capital.
Calling the dissolution of the National Board of Revenue half-cooked, the veteran politician said that the interim government should not deal with political issues such as port management and provision of a corridor to anybody.
Observing that the interim government is doing everything except strengthening the election road map, for which people sacrificed lives, he said that the country was heading for uncertainties.
Debapriya Bhattacharya, convener of the聽 Citizen鈥檚 Platform and a distinguished fellow at the Centre for policy Dialogue chaired the discussion and presented the keynote titled 鈥楤angladesh Economy 2025-26: Policy Reforms and National Budget鈥�.
Interest payments and subsidies will consume 75 per cent of the government revenue while a large portion of the revenue will be spent on public sector salaries, said speakers, apprehending that the government would have to rely on both domestic and foreign borrowing to implement the development budget.
As many as 44 speakers participated in the discussion.
The speakers included 11 writers of the White Paper Committee 2024, who mainly focused on what the interim government was doing with the recommendations made in the white paper.
Debapriya said that they had seen a resurgence of bureaucracy which was not good for the country.
He lamented that there had been no discussions with stakeholders on the upcoming national budget.
He commented that the same old structural problems would once again affect the budgetary allocations.
The national budget is scheduled to be televised by finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed on June 2, the first budget under the interim government, against the backdrop of a macroeconomic crisis, reserve shortage, high unemployment, inflation, and heightening geo-political tensions.
Chief adviser鈥檚 special assistant Anisuzzaman Chowdhury, who was a special guest at the discussion, cut short his presence and speech following a call from the chief adviser to him to attend an emergency meeting with him.
Giving the example of the 1997 economic crisis in Asia, which was sparked even without creating any macroeconomic stress, he said that Bangladesh was no more a basket case.
Still, the country is navigating a system in which uncertainties abound, he said, indicating Trump鈥檚 tariff war.
A number of writers of the white paper said that the budget preparation with controversial data from the AL regime would encourage the same kind of inflated data in future.
They also said that the unwillingness of the interim government to go tough against the identified syndicate members involved in the manpower business in Malaysia had given wrong messages to honest businesses.聽聽
Zahid Hussain, former Dhaka lead economist of the World Bank, highlighting the reform measures adopted in the banking sector and in bringing back the stolen money, observed that more work and less talk were imperative to accomplish the tasks.
M Tamim, vice-chancellor, Independent University, Bangladesh, said disasters loomed in the energy sector as the present government could not reduce the dependence on imported gas.
Saiful Alam Khan, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami central executive council member, also took part in the discussion.
He suggested that the government should work for increasing the participation of Bangladeshi workforce in Middle East countries, where the Indian citizens are dominating, as a measure to curb the unemployment problem.