Dhaka 12 June 2008: Equity and Justice Working Group (equitybd) has organized a post budget dialogue on the proposed national budget of Bangladesh of the financial year 2008 – 2009. The dialogue was to facilitate people’s expectations to fed into the proposed one. A number of civil society organizations , representatives of different professional group, representatives of leading political parties were participated in the dialogue and put forward their concern to make national budget pro poor wherein people would have equitable and justified access to the resources. Among others, Mr. Rashed Al Titumir of Unnayan Onneshan, Mahmudur Rahman Manna, Organizing Secretary   of Bangladesh Awami league (AL) , Samsuzzaman Dudu, Agriculture Secretary of  Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) , Golam Mortoza editor of Saptahik, Ahmed Swapan Mahmud of VOICE, Maliha  Shajahan of APIT,  Sharif A Kafi of BDPC were present and expressed their views and thoughts to make the budget pro- poor. The seminar was moderated by Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, and basic frame work of budget analysis has presented by  Shamsuddoha, of Equitybd. Detail analysis of the budget has presented by Syed Amiul Haque of Equitybd. Presentations of detail analysis are also available in here through electronic links.

In overall equitybd has mentioned that the budget has very little link to the underline root causes of the present food and fuel crisis and also the poverty situation. The budget has prepared in a very a populist approach, taking consideration of shot term remedies of the crucial problems, but in fact which in turn will lead to the long term problems of debt disaster.

Eqyuitybd has also mentioned that due to the IFI (international financial institutions) dominated PRSP process in fact there are hardly exist any nationally owned long term planning, it should be noted that the country is in transition period of PRSP first to second phase. There are a PRSP first phase review from equitybd available in eNewsletter Issue:12 . It is already vivid that Bangladesh is already heading toward fall back in MDG achievements (eg., inclusion of 2.5 millions of poor people in recent time)  and the country heading toward new debt burden in 2015.

Sayed Aminul Haque in his key note presentation on proposed budget said; although the budget proposed increased amount of allocation to social safety net projects and to other prime sectors like agriculture but these subsidy likely to benefit urban middle class and rural elites. Syed Aminul commented social safety net dominated budget as the budget of charity approach, which is only to satisfy immediate needs not really looking at the long term measures for poverty reduction. The proposed budget is heavily relied on deficit financing from the external sources, which will make country more indebted to the international financial institutions and domestic banking sectors.  Syed Aminul pointed that the government could follow the recommendations of Public Expenditure Review Committee (PERC), which has been framed while 4-party alliance was in power. Again, analysis
of the implementation of previous year’s budget showed that expenditure in service and human development sectors like health and family planning, power and energy etc. was comparatively less than the other sectors like defense, public works etc, which has a concern to the human poverty and widening rural-urban as well as rich-poor gap.

In the open discussion many of the discussant indicated power and agriculture subsidy as discriminatory and unjustified while around 90 percent of these subsidy is being spent to satisfy luxury of urban and other middle class population.. Speakers in the dialogue demanded withdrawal of fossil fuel subsidy from the non-agriculture/ non-productive sectors. They also proposed several specific recommendation to reduce fossil fuel dependency; like obligatory utilization of energy efficient bulbs, fixing air condition at 26 degree temperature, car free day in a week, advancing one hour for optimum use of day light,  limited and controlled utilization of government vehicles (please note that government consume more then 30 % fuel at present), promotion of solar energy, making public transport system poor people friendly, construction of bicycle lane in all the city road,  ban on the import of high CC cars etc.

The speakers also opposed the present concept of attaining food security as this concept undermines farmers and peoples’ rights on production system, indigenous knowledge, seeds and make farmer dependent on multi-national companies for agricultural inputs.


For detail analysis please see or download the presentations  as below. Equitybd has also organized pre and post budget television talk show, which is available in www.equitybd.org.

Proposed Budget for the fiscal year of 2008-09 is taka 999620 million

Taka 743620 million (74.40% of total budget) for revenue expenditure  (Non development expenditure) and taka 256000 million (25.6%) for  development expenditure (Annual Development Program)

Allocation in Education sector is 122580 million (11.5% of total budget
 and 1.9% of GDP) and in Health sector is 58620 million (5.6% of total
 budget and 0.95% of GDP)

Proposed huge amount of subsidy taka 305800 million (31% of total
 budget) will benefit urban middle class and rural elites and virtually  will not create any impact of poverty reduction

No link to the long term solution especially reducing aid dependency,  food security and employment creation 

	Subject	Click	Presented By
1	Budget Feedback Framework and Some Fundamental Approach		Md Shamsuddoha
2	Budget analysis & review based on economic justice and equity		Syed Aminul Hoque

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