A good number of central banks across the globe have started printing money to get a turnaround from the ongoing financial recession.

Protected and unprotected: an oblique line of the government’s preference separated the two.

Save for a slash in income tax, there is no respite in this year’s budget for the penny-pinching middle class. Their expenditures will continue going up even as the global pandemic and resulting recession hits their incomes and slashes their jobs.

The much-anticipated national budget for fiscal year 2020-21 turns out to be a document trying to run on the momentum.

Allocation of total government expenditure by sector FY 2020-21

There is hardly any precedence of preparing a national budget under such extraordinary hard times and with so much uncertainties and dilemmas.

There is no specific programme mentioned in the budget for the urban poor who have been hit the hardest during the shutdown of the economy for over two months.

Hands out for help

Any finance minister delivering a national budget wants, ideally, to project three qualities: calm, authority and very slight dullness.

The previous global financial recessions gave a lesson that any economic fallout can be tackled smoothly if the health of banks is protected from the crisis.

Mitul Akter’s father came to her chamber at Regent Hospital in the capital’s Mirpur yesterday morning. He tested positive for coronavirus a few days ago.

With the need to ensure uninterrupted oxygen supply at public hospitals having become increasingly critical in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, there appears to be a glimmer of hope as the authorities concerned are moving towards installing oxygen tanks in more hospitals.

The first day of the lockdown in the capital’s East Rajabazar was enforced strictly yesterday, with no one except those on emergency duty, including doctors, nurses and journalists, allowed to go outside.

With the novel coronavirus infections spreading across the country, critical patients outside the capital and divisional headquarters are increasingly becoming vulnerable due to ill-equipped district hospitals.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday said her government would continue to take measures to ease people’s sufferings and protect their livelihoods amid coronavirus pandemic.

The Covid-19 death toll reached 1,012 with half of the deaths reported in the last 16 days.

It seems the universe keeps conspiring against Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. When it is his moment to shine, some misfortune strikes. Last year, it was dengue, and this year, it is the raging coronavirus that has left him at the centre of what could possibly be Bangladesh’s most acute economic -- and human -- crisis yet.

The country’s first metro rail project, Mass Rapid Transit-6, may miss its completion deadline in December next year if the construction suffers any further delays.

Ninety-five percent of the people surveyed across the country suffered a loss of income due to shutdown and social distancing measures enforced by the government in late March to contain the spread of the Covid-19, says a Brac survey.

Thousands of critical cancer, heart, kidney and liver patients have their treatments on hold as medical tests they require have been off for lack of radioactive isotope for the last two months.