Dhaka: When Finance Minister AMA Muhith placed the budget for the outgoing 2016-17 financial year (FY17), he said the budget would put in place the pragmatic steps to take the economy to higher growth trajectory.

He also told the Jatiya Sangsad (JS) that the government already identified the challenges to the country’s progress those would be addressed with effective steps.

Now, as the finance minister is set for announcing the national budget for the coming 2017-18 financial year (FY18), people’s expectation and speculation prompted that the next fiscal policy and outlay would draw government’s ultimate endeavour to fulfil their dreams.

Muhith, a renowned economist, already showed his charisma in presenting national budget with high expectation and cautious evolution of both economic and non-economic challenges. This year he is presenting the national budget for the 11^th time. The budget, however, will be the country’s 46^th budget and the 18^th of the Awami League government.

Muhith is also going to be the first finance minister who is placing the national budget for the ninth time in a row since 2009.

In the budget, Muhith is expected to be a highly articulated to showcase how much the government had done for the people and the country in the past few years and what else it would have in its development agenda for the coming days.

With his vast experience in the field of economy and the endeavour for the development of the country as a freedom fighter and a language movement veteran, Muhith already announced that the coming budget would be the ‘best budget’ of his life. He hinted that the budget size is likely to over Taka 4 trillion. He also hinted at increasing the revenue growth target to 30 per cent in the new budget.

The issues including growth, investment, poverty, food security and infrastructure, would likely to get priority in the next fiscal policy and allocation as Muhith at the pre-budget discussions clearly put special attention on changing economic status of the country from low to middle-income group by 2021.

The next budget would also have some other special features those are designed in line with the government’s target of promoting the country to middle-income group by 2021.

There will have a set of proposals for reforming further the country’s revenue authorities by introducing new VAT (value added tax) law so the government could mobilise more internal resources and keep the budget deficit within 5.0 percent.

In his speech, Muhith would claim success in meeting the energy crisis when GPD growth met target, inflation was also kept under control, and the country saw significant improvement of various administrative and financial services in the past one year, thanks to digitization programme and political stability.

Like in the previous year, the budget this year too will be presented on PowerPoint and will be made available on the website of the finance division—www.mof.gov.bd.

The budget documents will also be available on www.bangladesh.gov.bd, www.nbr-bd.org, www.plancomm.gov.bd, www.imed.gov.bd, www.bdpressinform.org and www.pmo.gov.bd and at the BSS website www.bssnews.net.

Any person or organisation at home and abroad can send feedback, opinion or recommendation by filling up a form after downloading it from the website.

The finance minister will address a post budget press conference at the Osmani Memorial Auditorium on 2 June at 3:00pm on Friday.