Rejaul Karim Byron

The IMF staff mission is set to begin its next series of meetings with the Bangladesh authorities today to measure how the country is faring with the $4.7 billion loan programme.

The government is set to enact the first-ever public audit law that will usher in more transparency and accountability in public expenditure and expand the scope of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s spending on subsidies and interest payments surged 45 per cent year-on-year in the first eight months of this fiscal year, turning out to be the highest in at least a decade.

The 5.5 percent growth forecast made by the International Monetary Fund for the Bangladesh economy would be decent given the pressure emanating from the external side, said a top official of the multilateral lender yesterday.

The poverty rate in Bangladesh has dropped significantly but income inequality is at an all-time high, according to the latest version of the Household Income and Expenditure survey -- in a puzzling development that raises questions about the nature of economic growth seen in recent times.

The poverty rate in Bangladesh has declined to 18.7 per cent and the extreme poverty rate stood at 5.6 per cent, according to the latest data from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).

Bangladesh is poised to meet five of the six targets set by the International Monetary Fund for March as part of the $4.7 billion loan programme.

The finance ministry has already finalised the revised budget for this fiscal year and the concerned ministries are informed about it but it will not be made public until June.

The government is set to present a 12 percent bigger budget for fiscal 2023-24, the last of the Awami League government’s present tenure, as it looks to juggle austerity and growth ambitions.

The World Bank today said Bangladesh’s GDP would grow by 5.2 per cent in the current financial year, unchanged from its January forecast, as elevated inflation, tighter financial conditions, disruptive import restrictions, and global economic uncertainty keep hurting the economy.

The government is set to increase the amount of allowance under the social safety net programme in the next budget to cushion the poor from the impacts of high inflation.

The government is on track to meeting the International Monetary Fund’s tax collection target for March but may miss the mark in June.

The central bank has said the government will have to borrow more from non-banking sources to finance its expenditures in a bid to rein in higher inflationary pressures as the latter’s bank borrowing surged.

It seems the Bangladesh economy is stuck in a time warp, going by the latest edition of the Labour Force Survey unveiled yesterday.

In the end, was the government’s austerity stance just lip service?

Bangladesh is poised to get about $2 billion in budget support this fiscal year in a co-funding initiative led by the Asian Development Bank, in a development that would ease the continued pressure on the foreign currency reserves.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is scheduled to travel to Washington DC towards the end of next month to celebrate 50 years of partnership between Bangladesh and the World Bank.

Development spending in Bangladesh stood at 32.10 per cent in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, the slowest pace of implementation during the rule of the Awami League, official figures showed.  

The Rooppur nuclear power plant is likely to be delayed further if the recent revision of one of the associated projects is any indication.

Although the government discourages implementing agencies of development projects in Bangladesh from seeking time and cost revisions, several proposals in this regard are placed at each meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec).