Professor Wahiduddin Mahmud
Chairman, Bureau of Economic Research
University of Dhaka and Former Advisor to the Caretaker government

 

 
 

In this year's budget it is told that it will cerate employment, alleviate poverty and thus it allocates more in education, health and agriculture sector. But relation between budget allocation and poverty alleviation is not directly related.

It is more indirect. But without good governance how can we achieve it? It is also appreciable that Finance Minister concentrated more for educational sector especially female education. Education scholarship is also appreciable. Agriculture subsidy especially doubling the fertilizer subsidy is also appreciable. But the question is how the quality of education will be achieved? If we can not make qualitative change in primary and secondary education level, this extra allocation will not bring any benefit. So, good governance is a prime factor for this.

Actually budget is a proposal. There always remains a gap among budget proposal and actual implementation. So, it is not possible to evaluate development with proposed budget only.