Given the current dismal state of the stock market and business climate, there is little room for optimism regarding revenue collection. The deficit in the revised budget for 2025–26 may rise to Tk 30 or more. Structurally, then, this budget is not significantly different from the Awami League's final budget. However, compared to the FY2024–25, there is a shift in structure. In that budget, for every Tk 100, Tk 67 came from revenue, while the remaining Tk 33 was covered with Tk 13 in foreign loans and grants, and Tk 20 in domestic borrowing.
Planning advisor Wahiduddin Mahmud has said that this budget reflects an effort to move away from a debt-dependent development model.
Although Tk 530 billion (Tk 53 thousand crore) was slashed from the Awami League’s final budget, the larger chunk, that is, Tk 500 billion (Tk 50 thousand crore), was cut from the development budget. There is nothing wrong with that. It is expected that major development projects will be taken up by the newly elected government.
What was unwarranted, however, is the massive operating expenditure of this government, which has kept the Awami-era figures virtually intact and thus exposing inefficiency. On the surface, the government claims to be practicing austerity by keeping the cabinet small, and the speech reflects that claim. But the operating expenditure of Tk 5.06 trillion (Tk 5 lakh 6 thousand crore) in the concluding fiscal year does not support this claim since in the previous year, this figure was Tk 4.12 trillion (Tk 412 thousand crore).
The finance adviser made some biased remarks in the budget. At times, it seemed as if all dreams of Bangladesh’s development were born with the July 2024 uprising. But development is like the story of Rome being built brick by brick. It doesn’t happen overnight. Since the 1980s, Bangladesh’s growth rate has increased by 1 to 1.25 percentage points each decade. From 3.5 per cent in the 1980s, it rose to 6.5 per cent in the 2010s. During this period, Bangladesh was ruled by the Jatiya Party, BNP, and Awami League, all of whom share credit for this achievement.
At one point, the finance advisor said that his budget has moved away from the 'growth-centric' approach of the past and embraced a path of 'holistic development.' Yet, one of the growing aspects of past budgets was social protection, which hardly proves a narrow focus on growth alone. Besides, even if a budget were growth-oriented, what's wrong with that? Growth is not a sufficient condition for development, but it is a necessary one. There is no country, on any plant, that has achieved development without growth. Without the steady climb in growth since the 1980s, today’s Bangladesh would not exist.
