by Naim-Ul-Karim
DHAKA, Jun 4 (NNN-XINHUA) – Bangladesh yesterday announced its biggest ever national budget, as the country seeks to continue the growth momentum, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Bangladeshi government unveiled a record 6.04 trillion-taka (nearly 72 billion U.S. dollars) national budget, for the 2021-22 fiscal year, starting in July, prioritising pandemic control, health sector, social safety-net and agriculture.
The government announced massive spendings for both urban and rural areas and projected an economic growth of 7.2 percent for the new fiscal year.
Finance Minister, AHM Mustafa Kamal, yesterday placed before parliament, the 13th annual budget of Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina’s government.
Bangladesh has been able to achieve a real GDP growth of 5.2 percent in the outgoing fiscal year 2020-21 (July, 2020 to June, 2021), said Kamal, while presenting the new budget.
Despite the pandemic, Bangladesh has been able to maintain macroeconomic stability of the economy, with prudent fiscal policy and accommodative monetary policy, he said, in a speech of his third consecutive budget as finance minister, since 2019.
“Bangladesh’s sustained achievement of high GDP growth in the last decade, has been halted temporarily due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though we achieved a record 8.15 percent growth in FY 2018-2019, it has slowed down to 5.2 percent in FY 2019-2020, due to the pandemic.”
Bangladesh is one of the countries that achieved the highest economic growth in 2020, Kamal said, quoting data from the International Monetary Fund.
According to the World Bank, “Bangladesh economy shows early signs of recovery amid uncertainties,” he said.– NNN-XINHUA
