The Bangladesh Economic Association (BEA) has proposed a Tk 11,95,486 crore alternate national budget for the next fiscal year (FY25).
BEA General Secretary Md Aynul Islam proposed this alternate budget at a press conference held at its office in Dhaka on Monday, reports BSS.
Aynul said this alternate budget has been proposed in a bid to transform the 70-80 per cent majority population of the country into a sustainable middle class by 2034.
He said if this proposed budget is implemented by the government, the disparity will be removed as well as there will be poverty alleviation, ensuring social security, reduction of inflation and improvement in the foreign currency reserve situation.
BEA President Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad and immediate former president Abu Barkat were present among others at the programme.
The BEA alternate budget proposals highlight that the government would have to explore many newer sources of revenue generation which were unexplored in the past or not utilized as per necessity.
These include property tax, tax on excess profit, tax collection from the recovered laundered money, undisclosed money and imposing tax on foreign nationals.
The association also suggested putting more emphasis on direct tax rather than indirect tax, keeping the poor, lower-middle-class and middle-class people outside the tax net for the next couple of years.
Out of the total alternate budget size of Tk 11,95,486 crore, the BEA proposed realising Tk 10,24,767 core as revenue income which is 92.13 per cent of the budget size. Out of the deficit budget size of Tk 1,70,719 crore, Tk 95,719 crore will come from the bond market, TK 25,000 crore from the sales of savings certificates, and TK 50,000 crore from the public and private partnership.
There will be no role of local loans and foreign loans in financing the budget.
