Finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith on Sunday said ministry-wise allocations in the next budget would not increase because of the Padma Bridge project.
Focus will be on the Padma Bridge project which will not allow the government to allocate additional funds to other priority areas, like energy, social safety net, and agriculture, he said.
‘This will be a sacrifice for the Padma Bridge project,’ he said just before his pre-budget discussion with the secretaries of the ministries and the divisions at the planning commission in the afternoon.
He said the government would build the bridge with its own funds.
The government had to give up the idea of borrowing $1.2 billion from the World Bank for building the Padma Bridge as the probe into the ‘conspiracy of corruption’ by Bangladesh functionaries had hit snags.
Muhith said sovereign bonds would be issued to borrow $1 billion from the international money market for the bridge project. He said time was appropriate for the country to issue sovereign bonds like many Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Indonesia.
He observed that the country’s exports and imports would fall short of targets in the outgoing fiscal because of global economic downturn. He said export and import targets in the new fiscal would not be much higher.
Muhith said the projected growth rate of the gross domestic product at 7.2 per cent would not be achievable in the outgoing fiscal. He said the GDP growth rate would hover around 6.4 per cent. (Source)
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