Thinking Aloud: Volume VI, Issue 1: June 2019

Thinking Aloud steps into the 6th year! 

The June 2019 issue of Thinking Aloud focuses on “The challenges of the national budget of Bangladesh”. The first page article titled “Fiscal policy to address growing inequality in Bangladesh” elaborates the importance of the use of taxation and different forms of public spending in education, health and social protection to combat the growing inequality in Bangladesh. The second page article on “Revenue mobilisation in Bangladesh: Recent trends” stresses that in line with the ambitious growth projections as well as to cover ever increasing resource need for poverty reduction and SDG realization, Bangladesh has been setting high revenue targets in budgets – relying mostly on NBR tax sources. The article also suggests the way forward to realize revenue potential in Bangladesh. The article mentions that revenue mobilisation in Bangladesh can be improved significantly over the medium https://dietitianlavleen.com/where-to-get-ativan/ term by focusing reforms in the VAT and income tax fronts. The third page article titled “Gender budgeting in Bangladesh: The challenges and way forward” emphasizes the fact that, for a patriarchal and conservative country like Bangladesh, gender budgeting can act as an important policy tool to attain gender parity in different aspects. In addition, while assessing gender budget, we should not confine ourselves to mere quantitative aspects of the projects, rather the yard stick of assessment should be qualitative, e.g. those set under SDGs or other development priorities. Besides these, it should also be kept in mind that, as the goal of empowerment involves a number of relevant ministries, lack of coordination among projects and relevant ministries often hamper the process. The fourth page covers the events that took place in the month of May.