Former BEA president Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad tells New Age
Jasim Uddin Sarker
Former president of the Bangladesh Economic Association Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad said the government should take steps to reduce the gap between the development plans chalked out in the budget and their implementation.
‘Every year government announces a big development budget but its implementation remains poor. It is essential to ensure full implementation of the development programmes,’ the eminent economist told New Age in a recent interview on the forthcoming national budget.
‘The government should take necessary steps in the upcoming budget to ease inflation and it is a great challenge as the commodity prices on the international market are on the rise,’ said the founding president of the association.
‘At present the inflationary pressure has become critically high with the rate reaching a double-digit figure,’ he added.
‘The government should take effective measures to strengthen the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh and improve the supply chain as well as expand the social safety net programmes to tackle the rising inflation,’ Kholiquzzaman said.
The government has initiated some steps to tackle the inflation and begun Open Market Sales of rice at a low price and in some cases free of cost, he said, adding, these programmes should be extended in the next fiscal year.
The veteran economist said, ‘There are some irregularities in distribution of the social safety net allocations in rural areas, which will spoil the government’s efforts to support the poor.’
‘The government should take effective measures to strengthen the local government institutions to reduce such anomalies,’ he said.
‘Though the rate of poverty has come down according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, a large number of the population is still living below the poverty line,’ Kholiquzzaman mentioned, adding that ‘it should be taken into consideration to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and to eliminate unequal distribution of wealth.’
He termed regional disparity a big problem for the country as some areas were getting very little budgetary allocations and priority in development activities, which should be addressed in the budget.
‘It is good sign that exports are rising but there are a lot of issues to deal with in order to improve the export revenue. On the other hand, the country’s import expenditure is also getting higher. The next budget should have some provisions for meeting any additional import cost,’ he said.
He said, ‘The commodity prices on the domestic market are high due to the impact of increased commodity prices on the international market and the situation may create obstacles to overcoming the rising inflation.’
On the capital market situation he said the government should take steps according to the recommendations of the probe committee on the January’s stock market scam and it was essential to make taxpayer’s identification number mandatory for opening and maintaining beneficiary owner’s accounts.
He said, ‘Considering the recent inflation, increasing living cost, and commodity price hike, the government should increase the tax-free income ceiling and initiate a drive to expand the tax net.’
He also said, ‘Climate change and natural disaster issues should be emphasised for achieving a sustainable development and the next budget should be environment-friendly.’
In his opinion, ‘It is not enough to allocate money for the protection of environment. The government also should take tough action against the vested groups involved in activities damaging to the environment.’
He said public-private partnership had huge potential for improving the economic situation and facilitating a higher economic growth and the next budget should give importance to PPP initiatives.
‘The government may include the banks and financial institutions in PPP projects but it should not impose too heavy a burden on private-sector entities under the PPP initiative,’ he remarked, adding, ‘The government is mainly responsible for implementation of the PPP programmes.’
He said the next budget would be a challenging one as it would have to coordinate and implement the government’s plan, the election manifesto, and the sixth five-year plan.
He found the current growth rate of gross domestic product satisfactory but said that a huge potentiality to increase the GDP growth rate remained still untapped.
The former BEA chief also recommended that the government should take effective measures to improve the power and energy situation immediately.
jasimsarker 