Govt employees’ salaries to be increased by Tk 606 cr

11.28 pc of total budget for FY 2022-23

Mahfuja Mukul: The non-development expenditure sector is accounting for 74 percent of the total expenditure of the budget for the next financial year. Incentives-subsidies, interest payments on loans and salaries of government employees account for about 49 percent. Of this, Tk 1,08,145 crore will be spent on incentive subsidies, Tk 70,275 crore on interest payments and Tk 6,412 crore on salaries of government employees.
According to the relevant sources, in the budget that the government is going to finalize in the next 2022-23 fiscal year, the expenditure in the non-development sector has been estimated at Tk 4,31,758 crore. This is Tk 53,300 crore more than the current fiscal year 2021-22.
It is learned that the finance department of the finance ministry has recently estimated a budget of Tk 6 lakh 8 thousand 84 crore for the new financial year.
The new budget proposal of the finance department estimates the potential expenditure for the next financial year in several sectors including operating expenditure and other expenditure sectors. Of this, the combined expenditure on subsidies, incentives and cash loans has been estimated at Tk 1,06,145 crore. This is 26.13 percent of the total budget and Tk 27 thousand 910 crore more than the current fiscal year 2021-22. In the current financial year, Taka one lakh 49 thousand 235 crore has been spent in these three sectors.
Analysis of the draft budget data shows that government spending on subsidies and incentives is increasing every year. In some years, there is an excess of allocation in the main budget. In the 2019-20 financial year, Taka 31 thousand 961 crore has been spent in the subsidy sector. In the fiscal year 2020-21, the allocation for the subsidy sector was Tk 48,500 crore. In contrast, the expenditure increased to Tk 48,451 crore. In the current fiscal year 2021-22, Tk 48,192 crore has been allocated for the subsidy sector.
In the revised budget, it is known that the subsidy is increasing by about Taka 12 thousand 756 crore. Similarly, in the fiscal year 2019-20, Tk 51,500 crore has been spent in the incentive sector. In the fiscal year 2020-21, it has increased to Tk 56,617 crore.
The highest expenditure in the budget alone is on repaying interest on loans (domestic and foreign), especially on domestic loans. Expenditure on repaying interest on foreign loans did not change much. In the new budget, the expenditure for repaying the loan has been fixed at Tk 80,275 crore. This is 11.64 percent of the total budget. In the current financial year, the expenditure in this sector has been estimated at Tk 6,589 crore (out of which interest on domestic loans is Tk 62,000 crore.
According to the Finance Department, the government’s interest expenditure in the last fiscal year 2020-21 stood at Tk 80,056 crore (of which Tk 7,299 crore was domestic and Tk 4,026 crore was foreign). The interest expenditure has increased by Tk 6,06 crore more than the target announced in the budget.
Among other things, in the new budget, Tk 7,412 crore has been spent on paying salaries of government officials and employees. This is 11.28 percent of the total budget and Tk 6,06 crore more than the current fiscal year 2021-22. In the current financial year, an expenditure of Tk 69,748 crore has been incurred in this sector. In the financial year 2020-21, Taka 75 thousand 618 crore was spent in this sector.
In the next budget, expenditure of Tk 37,332 crore has been fixed for the goods and services sector. This is 5.85 percent of the total budget and Tk 2,160 crore more than the current fiscal year 2021-22. In the current financial year, the expenditure in this sector has been estimated at Tk 38,162 crore. In the last 2020-21 financial year, the government spent Tk 25,196 crore in this sector.
Meanwhile, the budget has allocated Tk 2,48,208 crore for the Annual Development Program (ADP). This is 36.32 percent of the estimated budget. In other words, the size of non-development expenditure in the budget is almost two and a quarter time more than the development expenditure.