BNP, the main opposition political party, today said the government has placed an unimplementable national budget for the 2020-21 fiscal without taking any special measures to improve people's lives and economy amid the prevailing coronavirus crisis.
"The entire nation is now passing through a catastrophe due to the coronavirus outbreak. To save people's lives and the economy from the crisis, it was necessary to announce a special corona budget --different from the ordinary budget structure. Without doing so, the finance minister[AHM Mustafa Kamal] announced an ordinary and unimplementable budget," BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said.
Claiming that the people have been frustrated by the proposed national budget, Fakhrul said his party had June 9 given a midterm budget structure with a three-year recovery plan to retrieve the country's crippled economy.
"But the finance minister announced an absolutely ordinary budget, ignoring our recommendations and opinion of most of the country's leading economists," Fakhrul said.
Fakhrul came up with the party's formal reaction through a virtual press conference held at his Uttara residence in the capital this afternoon.
There is no specific proposal in the budget for building a sustainable economic structure in the country to eventually move past and defeat the pandemic, the BNP leader said.
The expected amount of money was not allocated to health, education, social welfare and food safety sectors, he said.
There is no alternative but to establish effective governance, transparency and accountability at all levels in the country to retrieve the economy, the BNP leader said in his reaction.
The nation expected that the health sector would be given top priority in the national budget for the 2020-201 fiscal but the finance minister has dashed the hope, Fakhrul said.
