Jatiya Sangsad passes Finance Bill

The Jatiya Sangsad has passed the Finance Bill-2021 without major changes.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal placed the bill which was passed by voice vote on Tuesday (June 29) noon.

The bill was introduced in the House on June 3

The Finance Bill kept provisions of whitening undisclosed money without any question in the capital market, land and properties, and establishing new industries through giving certain amount of taxes for next fiscal year (FY22).

The Finance Minister said the like the outgoing fiscal year, the government has also adopted expansionary policy as policy perspective for which the the budget deficit stood at 6.2 percent which was 6.1 percent in the outgoing fiscal year.

Mentioning that the average budget deficit in the global economy is 41.53 percent, Kamal said the budget deficit of USA is 18.72 percent, China 11.88 percent, India 13.07 percent, Indonesia 6.31 percent, the Philippines 8.06 percent, Vietnam 6.02 percent and Japan 12.9 percent.

“Like this, the other economies of the world have also also fixed their budget deficits,"he added.

The Finance Minister said the whole of the world is now passing through an unprecedented challenging time since the usual trend of global economy has been devastated.

The Finance Minister said the foreign currency reserve has been multiplied by a whopping 7.5 times to near $46 billion adding that such a huge reserve within a short time is undoubtedly a historic record.

Opposition bench members Pir Fazlur Rahman, Harun Ur Rashid, Begum Rawshan Ara Mannan, Rumeen Farhana, Mosharrof Hossain, Rezaul Karim Bablu and Shamim Haider Patwari proposed publishing the Finance Bill 2021 for eliciting public opinions.

Later, the proposals for publishing the bill for eliciting public opinions and other amendments were rejected by voice vote.

The House accepted some amendments to the Finance Bill, 2021 from ruling party MPs Abdus Shahid, Abu Sayeed Al Mahmud Swapan and Washika Ayesha Khan. The amendments proposed by the opposition members were rejected by voice vote.