Not a budget of dream!

The interim government's Finance Adviser, Dr Salehuddin Ahmed, in response to criticism of the just-approved budget for FY 2025-26 that it followed an 'old road', came out forcefully saying that it was rather a 'highway born out of the old road'. The argument he produced to answer his critics is more rhetorical than substantive. Obviously, the expectation from the critiquing economists was that the budget would reflect the revolutionary transformation that the nation underwent through the July upheaval of 2024. Or in other words, the first budget of this government of change would be somewhat reformist, if not revolutionary, and not at all a traditional one, the critics expected.

Budgets are essentially the financial statement of a government's anticipated revenue incomes and planned expenditures for a particular financial year. Anti-people governments like the one ousted in August last year, are characterised by the way they allocated the nation's resources in the budget. The rich and the section of the population that the government of the time represented naturally got  the lion's share of the budgeted amount. The rich paid less in terms of income tax, while the people in the lower income bracket paid more. The local economic think tank, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), for instance, criticised the proposed changes in the pattern of levying income tax in the new budget. It said, the budget disproportionately raised tax burden on the low and middle income earners over the next two fiscal years. "From a distributional perspective this (budget) structure is not balanced. A key objective of the national budget is to reduce inequality, and this structure doesn't align with that goal", said Dr Fahmida Khatun, the think tank's Executive Director.

The past governments, fascistic or otherwise, were known for their yearly budgets that favoured the privileged sections of society at the expense of the rest of the population. Those were the traditional budgets. So, where does the present budget prepared under the leadership of the incumbent finance adviser depart from the traditional ones? True, his is not, as the Finance Adviser would like to describe, a 'dream budget' .But dream is too fanciful a metaphor for the government's present annual financial plan which is ordinary and lacks imagination.  No doubt, the decision of not to go for any new large-scale infrastructure projects in the coming year is commendable. Scrapping of the dormant or underperforming projects as part of rationalising the Annual Development Programme (ADP), too, is admittedly a step in the right direction. Similarly, allocation of Tk 912.97 billion which exceeds the allocation proposed initially by Tk.100 billion for the Social Safety Net (SSN) programme to protect the poor and the vulnerable, is a piece of good news for the intended beneficiaries of the programme. Started by the past government as a sop for the needy, the question about how far the genuine candidates for the allowances are being benefitted remains. For there were allegations galore in the past about the SSN allowances being misappropriated by fake recipients linked to local ruling party goons. It is not clear, if the interim government has developed a sound database of actual beneficiaries so the money is not wasted. However, It would make a real difference if the budget planners could conceive of a set of income generating projects with the SSN fund where the targeted  beneficiaries would be involved according to their abilities. That would provide a better opportunity for the poor and the vulnerable to work and earn income with dignity rather than being mere recipients of dole. And such a programme would be more imaginative or dreamlike as the adviser might like to put it.

sfalim.ds@gmail.com