Proposed budget prepared not for informal sector, new poor: Debapriya

The proposed national budget for 2021-2022 financial year has forgotten to take the new poor and the people who are lagged behind, mostly affected due to Covid-19 pandemic, on board, Debapriya Bhattacharya, convenor of Citizen's Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh said on Sunday.

‘The budget was not prepared for new poor, existing poor and also for informal sector,’ he said at a media briefing on ‘national budget 2021-2022: what is there for the disadvantaged people’ organised by the platform.

The budget has offered more for organised and large business sector and much less for middle class, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and the groups that are left behind, he said.

‘The budget is business-friendly but not friendly to small and informal sectors,’ he said.

Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Thursday placed before the parliament.

‘The second wave has not been considered in the preparation of the budgetary numbers and thus, in general, all projections for the FY2022 are on the higher side,’ Debapriya, also a distinguished fellow of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, said.

The situation has been created due to lack of updated data as well as the tendency of giving inflated data, he said.

Data deficit and discrepancy in the budgetary figures have been growing, he said.

It seems that the situation is being turned into data anarchy from data deficit, he observed.

News courtesy- http://www.newagebd.net/article/139922/proposed-budget-prepared-not-for-informal-sector-new-poor-debapriya