The amount of subsidy in the upcoming budget will be 15-16 percent of the total budget of about Tk 99,500 crore, said Finance Adviser Dr Mirza Azizul Islam yesterday.

“The subsidy is increasing not only for the fuel oil... it's total subsidy," he told reporters at the Zia International Airport on his return from the annual conference of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Jeddah, ahead of the national budget 2008-09, to be placed at 3 pm on Monday.

Aziz is going to announce the second budget during this caretaker government through radio and television in absence ofa parliament.

Speaking about the increased subsidy, the finance adviser said: "The budget is for the people. Increasing development expenditure does not mean anything if we've to keep people hungry."

He said the budget would do something for the government employees while the extreme

poor would come under the widened social protection measures.

"1 expect that once the government does whatever for its employees, the private sector will come forward to take some measures for their employees,” said Aziz.

He added the budget has hardly anything more to do to reduce the prices of essentials.

He, however, expected that the inflation would ease to some extent, likely to go below the double digit level, in the next fiscal with indications that the global price situation would see moderation to some extent, if not decline substantially.

He, however, said that the government wanted to give a minimum time to get feed back from the citizens as the deadline to pass the budget is June 30.

Azia said the GDP registered a growth of 6.1 percent so far and it would improve further at the end of the current fiscal year as indicators showed further improvement by now.