Rejaul Karim Byron

After a span of five years, state-owned enterprises jointly incurred a loss in the outgoing fiscal year largely because of Bangladesh

Former finance minister AMA Muhith has said his successor faces three major challenges: increasing the size of the national budget, realising more revenue and improving the banking sector.

In a break from the past, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal will set a more realistic revenue income target in his maiden budget, but may shy away from undertaking some much-needed economic reforms.

The government may bump up bank borrowing by as much as 77.32 percent to Tk 54,800 crore for financing the budget deficit in fiscal 2019-20 as it looks to reduce overdependence on saving instruments.

The government is likely to extend the tax exemption benefit on income from investment in infrastructure and industries in lagging regions for five years to encourage private investment and job creation.

The government is set to create a Tk 100 crore fund for start-ups as it looks to alleviate youth unemployment, which is progressively becoming an albatross for the country.

The government may once again offer scope for whitening black money through investment in industries to boost private investment, say finance ministry officials.

The government plans to bring in more people under its social safety net programme, including all disabled people, in the next budget as it looks to share the gains of the higher economic growth clocked in recent years with a larger section of the underprivileged in the society.

The government is planning to allocate Tk 100 crore to rehabilitate the victims of river erosion across the country.

The government is likely to whittle down value-added tax rates to five from existing seven as it is getting ready to implement the new VAT law from the next fiscal year, seven years after its enactment.

The government’s interest burden is likely to get heavier in the upcoming fiscal year thanks to its excessive reliance on high-cost national savings certificates to fund its expenditures.

The government is likely to take several steps for reviving the capital market and the real estate sector, including a cut in tax for flat purchase, in next fiscal year’s budget.

The government’s subsidy expen-diture is likely to soar 22.28 percent year-on-year to about Tk 45,000 crore next fiscal year as its

The government is going to allocate Tk 200 crore to pay a portion of the arrears of workers and officials of state-owned jute mills ahead of the Eid, officials said yesterday.

Bangladesh will sign a deal of over $1.2 billion with Japan for four projects, including the second metro rail connecting the capital’s airport and Kamalapur, during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to the East Asian country on May 28-31.

The government mulls over increasing the cash incentive for exports by one percentage point as it looks to motivate exporters to leverage the sudden opportunities presented by the US-China trade war. Currently, 26 sectors are provided with cash incentives ranging from 2 percent to 20 percent of their export

The long wait for thousands of teachers and employees of non-government educational institutions for MPO is likely to be over soon, as the government has decided to allocate Tk 1,150 crore for the pur-pose.

The government may give migrant workers a three percent cash incentive to encourage them to send remittance through official channels.

The government has allocated almost one-fourth of the development budget for fiscal 2019-20 to 14 mega projects with a view to

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi once said that growth that is not inclusive is not meaningful but just economic figures. And this proclamation seems to be gradually becoming relevant for Bangladesh.