Dhaka, June 1, 2025 (BSS): Finance Advisor Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed will present the Tk 790,000 crore national budget for the fiscal year 2025-26 tomorrow. It will highlight important issues such as creating new jobs, reducing inflation, facilitating trade and commerce, and restoring economic stability along with financial discipline.
This will be the country's 54th budget and the first budget of the interim government led by Professor Dr. Muhammad Yunus.
After the Sheikh Hasina government was ousted in a mass uprising by students and the public, the interim government led by Nobel laureate Professor Dr. Muhammad Yunus is steering the economy towards stability despite growing pressure and the national budget for the fiscal year 2025-26 is being announced.
The interim government's first budget also includes the difficult tasks of further controlling inflation, streamlining private investment and FDI, restoring full financial discipline, and strengthening the social safety net amid global and domestic uncertainties.
Finance Advisor Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed will deliver the pre-scheduled budget speech on Bangladesh Television (BTV) and Bangladesh Betar at 3 pm on Monday.
Private television channels and radio stations have been requested to simultaneously broadcast the speech using BTV's official feed.
Finance department officials said that the budget for the next fiscal year will emphasize increasing the tax-GDP ratio, facilitating local industries, increasing desired revenue collection, creating new jobs, attracting FDI, creating a business-friendly environment, reducing tax compliance deficit, and simplifying the VAT accounting system.
In addition, there is a possibility of simplifying some provisions of the relevant law to rationalize the supplementary duty rate to achieve the desired target in VAT collection.
The budget for the fiscal year 2024-25 was announced at Tk 7.97 lakh crore. This time, it is likely to be Tk 7 thousand crore less than last year.
Finance Ministry officials said that the budget for the fiscal year 2025-25 is being formulated through a more implementable and efficient fiscal plan in line with the government's priority on fiscal consolidation.
In a recent interview with BSS, the Finance Advisor said that the interim government has considered macroeconomic and social issues while formulating the budget. Therefore, the national budget for the fiscal year 2025-26 will be timely and realistic. It will also mention implementable methods.
He said, I will not call this budget (fiscal year 2025-26) small, but it will definitely be implementable and timely. This will be timely as issues like inflation, trade, foreign exchange reserves, ease of trade and commerce, revenue collection are being considered. We are considering all these issues and thus making the budget realistic.
The overall size of this year's budget is 0.87 percent less than the current fiscal year. The development budget will be reduced by Tk 35,000 crore to Tk 2,30,000 crore. And the revenue budget will be increased by Tk 28,000 crore to Tk 5,60,000 crore.
More stringent coordination with monetary policy will be given priority in fiscal policy. On the other hand, the budget is expected to reflect the recommendations of important reform commission and task force reports.
The bulk of the revenue budget, about 57 percent, may be allocated for salaries, subsidies, incentives and loan repayments. Salaries and allowances alone are expected to reach Tk 82,000 crore. Dearness Allowance for government employees may also be introduced in the budget.
The subsidy expenditure is expected to reach a total of Tk 116,000 crore. Interest payments could be about 22 percent of the revenue budget.
The budget deficit for the 2025-26 fiscal year is likely to be below 4 percent of GDP. The budget deficit could stand at Tk 226,000 crore, compared to Tk 256,000 crore in the current fiscal year and 3.62 percent of GDP.
The government will rely on foreign loans, bank loans and savings certificates to meet the budget deficit.
Finance department officials said that a potential medium-term GDP growth target of 5.5 percent has been set for the 2025-26 fiscal year, which is slightly higher than the revised 5.25 percent for the current year.
Inflation control will be a priority in the budget and the government will aim to bring it down to about 6.5 percent.
To ease the financial burden on the low-income group, the budget includes expansion of social safety net programs, increasing both the number of beneficiaries and the amount of allowances.
Priority will be given to key sectors such as agriculture, health, education and technology in fund raising.
The allocation for the Annual Development Program (ADP) has been set at Tk 2.3 trillion, which is lower than the Tk 2.65 trillion in the current fiscal year. However, it indicates a more focused move in terms of investment.
Dr. Salehuddin Ahmed assured that the upcoming budget will be business-friendly and a tax policy designed to boost investment, GDP growth and employment will be introduced.
The revenue collection target for the fiscal year 2025-26 is likely to be Tk 5.18 trillion, which is higher than the Tk 4.8 trillion in the current fiscal year.
Non-development expenditure will increase, with major allocations for credit services, food subsidies and banking sector reforms.
The underdevelopment budget is expected to reach Tk 560,000 crore, which is Tk 28,000 crore more than the allocation for the current fiscal year.
The government is planning to strengthen the banking sector by making special allocations to meet the capital deficit of state-owned banks.
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