Referring to the importance of the governance aspects of the budget and fixing its implementation responsibility, ICSB leaders urged upon the finance minister to use the service of the professionals in the budget preparation, interim review and identifying implementation bottlenecks.
The professional body feels that this would definitely assist the Government to achieve the desired results.
Institute of Chartered Secretaries of Bangladesh (ICSB) made the observations in a press conference recently titled ‘Expectation & Reaction of ICSB from proposed National Budget 2021-22’ on virtual platform.
ICSB President Muzaffar Ahmed, while addressing the press conference, drew the attention to the Compliance Audit, being done by the Chartered Secretaries among the Listed companies and urged upon the Government to extend the compliance audit among all the corporate having the fixed threshold of turnover.
He emphasized that the Budget is silent on many immediate national issues like reviving of the ailing banking and non-banking financial institutions sector where immediate attention is required in respect of policy issues. The Budget is also silent on fixing up a date of completion of Covid Vaccine among the citizens.
Md. ShafiqulAlam LL.B, FCMA, FCA, ACS, Council Member of ICSB explained the salient features of the proposed National Budget while Mohammad Sanaullah FCS, Past President & Chairman, Professional Development Committee, ICSB and Md. Selim Reza FCS, FCA, Vice President, ICSB commented on the budget features and its impact
Md. Sharif Hasan LL.B, FCS, Council Member of ICSBdelivered introductory speech and presented a budget review and elaborated different aspects of theBudget 2021-22. He said that Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal presented the budget with the theme “Bangladesh Towards a Resilient Future Protecting Lives and Livelihoods”. The total size of the budget amounts to Tk 6,03,681crores.
This is the 50thfiscal plan of Bangladesh and 3rd for Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal. The GDP growth rate for FY2021-22 has been fixed at 8.2% taking the post-COVID recovery situation into account. It is expected that the inflation rate will be 5.3% during the period.
ICSB members recommended to the inclusion of CS Practitioners as ITP and increase coverage of Secretarial Audit in more sectors. They also suggested re-evaluating the decision to increase tax in private universities.
Mohammad Sanaullah FCS, Immediate Past President and Chairman, Professional Development Committee thanked the keynote paper presenter for his nice deliberation.
He mentioned some positive aspects of the proposed budget such as constant rate of GDP, decrease of inflation rate which is not an easy job for government, corporate tax reduction of public limited company which will encourage capital market, proposed reduction tax rate from 3% to 2% for cement raw materials will reduce the cement price, no tax of worker profit participation fund and AIT has been proposed to 4% to 3% on raw materials for industries for those who are manufacturer.
Md. Selim Reza FCA, FCS, Vice President of the Institute said that 15% tax which has been imposed on Private University, Medical and Engineering College needs to be cancelled for benefits of the education sector.
