Bangladesh passes budget for 2016-17 fiscal year
Xinhua, July 1, 2016 Adjust font size:
Bangladeshi parliament Thursday passed 3.41 trillion taka (42.58 billion U.S. dollars) national budget for 2016-17 fiscal year beginning on July 1, targeting an economic growth of 7.2 percent.
Bangladeshi Finance Minister AMA Muhith on June 2 submitted the proposed 3,406.05 billion taka budget for the next fiscal year, which is up by nearly 16 percent over that of the original budget of the outgoing fiscal year 2015-16.
Parliament passed the budget on the last day of the current financial year curtailing tax at source on all export earnings. The tax at sources was reduced at 0.70 percent from the proposed 1.5 percent.
The overall budget deficit is 978.53 billion taka, which is 5 percent of GDP. Of this amount, 363.05 billion taka (1.9 percent of GDP) will be financed from external sources and 615.48 billion taka (3.1 percent of GDP) from domestic sources.
Muhith said the total estimated revenue will be 2.43 trillion taka.
GDP growth is expected to edge up to 7.05 percent in the outgoing 2015-16 fiscal year, Muhith said and added per capita income is expected to increase to 1,466 U.S. dollars.
"Gradual fall in inflation coupled with increase in real wages and foreign remittances will boost individual consumption spending. Over and above, political stability is expected to continue. Taking all these into consideration, we have set GDP target at 7.2 percent for the next fiscal year." Endit