Looters would enjoy extra facilities amid less accountability

Gono Samhati Andolan on Saturday said that looters have been given various facilities in the proposed budget as the structure of the government itself was non-accountable.

The organisation made the above comment at a post-budget press conference held at its office premises in Dhaka.

The finance minister on Thursday placed national budget before the parliament.

Samhati Andolan’s coordinator Zonayed Saki said that, in the budget, the government provided facilities to the people who were looting public money.

There was no initiative or provision for penalty in the budget to ensure recovery of defaulted loans and to establish good governance in the banking sector.

He also said that the government has widened the scope for the creation of new plunderers by legalising the undisclosed money amid investment in real estate, high-tech park and economic zone.

There is no provision for accountability in the government system, hence it facilitated the errant lenders to continue with their unscrupulous activities, Saki said.

The financial sector has been going into a severe crisis despite the much-vaunted GDP growth and development in the country.

The dearth of liquidity in the banking sector gradually reducing fund flow in the private sector, weakening the reserve capacity and contributing to the negative index in the current account balance and balance of payment — all this exposed the vulnerability of the financial sector, he contended.

In such a situation, the finance minister has proposed to take loans of Tk 47,000 crore from the banking sector in the proposed budget.

The banks would not be up for such a task — the sector would fail to provide the gigantic amount if one considered their overall situation and that would push the government to depend on national savings certificates with high interest rate or printing of new notes of taka by Bangladesh Bank that would put the country’s economy at risk, he said.

The banks failed to provide Tk 42,000 crore proposed in the outgoing fiscal year.

The unreasonable expenses in the government projects put a limit on the opportunity for employment generation in the projects amid lack of accountability.

Saki further said although the government has pledged to create new employment, there is a slim possibility of notable job generation as no effective or clear proposal was given in the budget.

The current budget was only a continuation of a trend that cultivated corruption by way of appeasing different beneficiaries of power while it marginalised the poor by imposing tax, he said.

There was no arrangement for ensuring fair prices of farmers’ paddy in the budget, he observed.

Allocation in the education and health sectors was negligible which would make the sectors more expensive for the public, he said.

‘We couldn’t expect to have a public welfare-oriented budget without a change in the status quo and without creating a polygonal, accountable democratic system,’ he said.

The budget was a traditional one — discriminative and ambitious.

‘The budget deficit has been shown at Tk 1.45 lakh crore. The government would have to take loans to finance the deficit with a huge interest rate, and this burden would continue year after year,’ he added.

The inability of tax collections in accordance with the increased expenditures would ultimately put undue pressure on the low-income people.

The government tax policy appeared to have facilitated the high-net-worth people amid imposition of extra burden on the general people.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net