Speaking to the media at
the party chief's Gulshan offices, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam
Alamgir called on the government to revise down the 15 percent uniform VAT to a
'tolerable level.'
The party’s official
reaction came on Sunday, 10 days after Finance Minister AMA Muhith rolled out a
Tk 4 trillion outlay, the biggest in the history of Bangladesh.
Alamgir also demanded
withdrawal of excise duty on bank deposits. "We see this budget as nothing
but a large-scale hoax. It aims to cheat the people."
The senior BNP leader said
it seems to him that the finance minister did not take into account welfare
goals in formulating the budget.
He said the country's
fiscal management 'might be at risk' due to some of the proposals made by the
minister in the new budget.
The cost of big projects
has escalated due to the government’s desperate efforts to make its so-called
development works visible to people, according to BNP leader Alamgir. “It will
lead to a waste of resources and create scope for corruption.”
"The size of Annual
Development Programme will be higher by 38.6 percent, compared to the outgoing
fiscal year. This jump is unrealistic."
The finance minister's
expectations for an 80 percent jump in foreign assistance are far from real, he
said
"It seems that those
who formulated the budget just came up with numbers.”
"A research body
remarked that when it was found the expenditure does not match the source of
funds, they assumed all of it will come from foreign sources and just included
that figure."
The BNP leader described
the target for 7 percent-plus growth for two years as a 'statistical trick'.
"The government is
yet to come out of the habit of a statistical gimmick to inflate the growth
rate."
On the issue of capital
flight, Alamgir citing the recent report by Global Financial Integrity said the
illicit outflow of funds in 2014 was about 4 percent of the GDP.
Unfriendly investment
climate, political instability and low confidence in the economy sparked the
outflow of funds, according to him.
The BNP leader said much
of the fund siphoned out of the country was black money made through illegal
means.
Alamgir came down hard on
the government for the proposed taxes. "Much of the revenue will come from
indirect tax, which has been imposed uniformly across all income groups."
He asked the government to
revise the income tax rate for the lowest threshold considering inflation and
withdrawal of duties on imports of agriculture equipment.
"The budget size
has increased but farm subsidies did not."
The BNP secretary general
called for the government to cut down the 15 percent VAT, saying it is the
highest among South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.
