Tk 7.61 trillion budget passed for FY 2023-24

Staff Correspondent: The budget of Tk 761,785 crore (Tk 7.61 trillion) for the financial year 2023-24 has been passed by the National Parliament. Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal proposed this budget in the National Parliament on June 1 with the theme of ‘Smart Bangladesh’s progress beyond a decade and a half of development journey’.
After almost a month of discussions and cuts in the parliament, he proposed the 2023-24 fiscal year budget pass (specification bill) in the national parliament on Monday, and it was passed by voice vote. The opposition’s retrenchment proposals were voted down.
In the process of passing the budget, the ministers raised a total of 59 approval demands in the parliament by highlighting the rationale of the expenditure of the respective ministries. These concession demands are approved by a voice vote in Parliament.
With the justification of these sanction demands, 10 members of parliament together with opposition parties and independents made a total of 502 layoff proposals. Among them, the members of the opposition discussed the two layoff proposals of the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. However, the retrenchment proposals were later rejected in a voice vote.
Fakhrul Imam of Jatiya Party, Kazi Firoz Rashid, Rustom Ali Faraji, Roshan Ara Mannan, Shamim Haider Patwari, Pir Fazlur Rahman, Mokkabir Khan of Gano Forum and independent member Rezaul Karim Bablu discussed the retrenchment proposal.
Then the Speaker voted for the passage of the budget and it was passed. The parliamentarians approved the budget for the fiscal year 2023-24 by passing the Specification Bill-2023.
Prior to this, Parliament passed the Finance Bill 2023 on June 25 and approved the rules related to the budget’s financial and tax proposals.
In the budget of the financial year 2023-24, the expenditure in other sectors including management has been estimated at Tk 475,281 crores. Tk 277,582 crores have been allocated for the annual development program. The GDP rate for the new fiscal year is set at 7.5 percent. The total GDP amount is estimated at Tk 506,782 crores.
The deficit in this year’s budget has been estimated at Tk 261,785 crores, which is 5.2 percent of the total GDP. The finance minister has proposed to collect Tk 102,490 crore from foreign sources and Tk 155,395 crore from domestic sources to meet the deficit.
The government has set a target of Tk 5 lakh crore as revenue. As per the target, the National Board of Revenue will collect Tk 430,000 crore and another Tk 70,000 crore will be collected from other sources.