Muhammad Ayub Ali
The allocation for emergency requirements to respond to the coronavirus pandemic has remained unchanged at Tk 10,000 crore in the proposed budget for 2021-22 fiscal year.
While placing a proposed budget of Tk 603,681 crore in parliament on Thursday, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said that the pandemic has forced the government to allocate the robust amount.
“The government will take all necessary measures to address the impact of the pandemic,” he said.
Coronavirus cases, first reported in China in December 2019, heavily affected the world economy. The International Monetary Fund described the global decline as the worst since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The pandemic had plunged the world into a "crisis like no other", IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath wrote in blog in April last year.
She pointed out that the “cumulative loss to global GDP over 2020 and 2021 from the pandemic crisis could be around 9 trillion dollars, greater than the economies of Japan and Germany, combined”.
As the pandemic hit, Bangladesh entered a months-long lockdown which brought economic activities to a screeching halt. The outbreak also pushed the country’s health sector its limits.
The government has since announced a slew of stimulus packages for economic recovery focusing on lives and livelihoods.
