With less than two months left of the financial year, an official says they need to sit and talk but they cannot do that because of the lockdown that is set to wipe out a big chunk of revenue.
A researcher estimates the government will miss the target by a staggering Tk 1.15 trillion.
“We can’t even hold discussions amid the COVID-19 panic. Everything has to be done via phone calls, emails. Where is the scope to discuss, review and analyse freely? But we have no other way. We must make a budget,” said an exasperated Shamsul Alam who is a member of the Planning Commission’s General Economics Division.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, who was stricken by dengue fever while presenting his first national budget last year, is going to place that fiscal plan in parliament on June 11.
In the last budget, he gave the National Board of Revenue the target of over Tk 3.25 trillion, more than 62 percent of the total outlay he set out.
The NBR has already missed the July-March target of Tk 2.21 trillion by around Tk 561.4 billion.
It’s been a slow grind for Bangladesh’s economy in terms of growth since the beginning of the fiscal year, with all the factors, except remittance, in the negative zone, impacting revenue.
The COVID-19 pandemic will eventually cost the country Tk 200 billion in lost revenue, according to the researcher Ahsan H Mansur.
“The rest of the deficit of Tk 1.15 trillion will be caused by the slow economy and ambitious target,” he said. He believes it was in no way prudent to target a 45 percent growth in revenue for the current fiscal year.
And even if the government goes for a budget for the entire fiscal year, it should not exceed Tk 3 trillion in size, much smaller than the last budget of Tk 5.23 trillion.
The Planning Commission’s Shamsul agrees. The revenue target for the next fiscal year should be low, he says, considering the colossal deficit the government will be left with this financial year.
An official with the NBR’s Income Tax Department, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were struggling to set the outlays.
“We don’t understand how much growth should be targeted sector-wise,” the official said.