The transport and communication heading of the budget has received the highest allocation in the development component under the proposed budget for the financial year 2025–26.
With this the transport and communication heading receives the highest allocation in development component for the 13th consecutive year, although percentage-wise it has somewhat decreased from the previous years.
Apart from road, railways, waterways and aviation sub-heads, transport and communication also includes post and telecommunication in the budget.
For the new financial year, development component allocations for the heading is 23.9 per cent of the budget, which was 25 per cent in the outgoing FY24–25, 27.3 per cent in FY23–24, 27 per cent in FY22–23, and 25.8 per cent in FY21–22.
For transport and communication, the allocation in the overall budget, which covers both the operating and development allocations, is 9 per cent in FY25–26, which was 10.4 per cent in the outgoing FY24–25, 11.5 per cent in FY23–24, and 12 per cent in FY22–23.
The overall allocation for the heading in the proposed budget has dropped to Tk 71,344 crore from Tk 82,918 crore in the outgoing financial year.
In FY23–24, the allocation was even higher—Tk 87,629 crore.
Finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed on Monday afternoon in a televised speech presented the proposed budget of an estimated 7,90,000 crore.
A breakdown of the proposed allocations for transport and communication for FY25–26 shows that Tk 38,496 crore is kept for the Road Transport and Highways Division under the road transport and bridges ministry.
The allocation was slightly less in the outgoing FY24–25 at Tk 38,143 crore.
The new budget proposes Tk 11,944 crore for the railways ministry, sharply down from Tk 18,072 crore in FY24–25.
Allocations for the shipping ministry also sees a considerable drop in the proposed budget to Tk 10,279 crore from Tk 11,270 crore allocated in the outgoing FY24–25.
The Bridges Division also sees similar drop in allocations for the FY25–26 at Tk 6,022 crore from Tk 7,318 crore allocations in FY24–25.
The civil aviation and tourism ministry gets Tk 2,455 crore in the proposed budget, sharply down from Tk 5,695 crore allocated in the outgoing FY24–25.
For the Posts and Telecommunications Division under the post, telecommunications and information technology ministry, the allocation proposed in the FY25–26 budget is Tk 2,148 crore, slightly down from the allocation of Tk 2,420 crore in the outgoing FY24–25.
The finance adviser in his budget speech said that initiatives to reduce unnecessary expenditure in this sector would also continue.
According to the revised Detailed Project Proposal of the ‘Padma Bridge Rail Link (2nd Revised)’ project, its implementation cost has been reduced by approximately Tk 622 crore and the cost of the ‘Construction of Single Line Dual Gauge Track from Dohazari to Cox’s Bazar via Ramu and Ramu to Gundum near Myanmar (2nd revised)’ project has been reduced by approximately Tk 6,699 crore.