ARUN DEVNATH

Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury’s first budget speech as finance minister performed a delicate, dual function: it read as an indictment of the old economic order, and served as a blueprint for its replacement. Come July 1, Khosru will have to fix the system -- and run his own playbook.

What the finance minister told parliament, in myriad ways, was that Bangladesh had been growing the wrong way. For years, the nation’s economic expansion was built on borrowed money, negotiated behind closed doors, and engineered for the benefit of whoever happened to hold the keys. This budget, Khosru argued, is the first instalment of growing differently.

To understand this budget, one must realise it is not entirely about next year. Yes, there is a staggering topline number -- Tk 9,38,000 crore, the largest in the country’s history -- and the usual columns of revenue and expenditure marching down the page. But the true subject is the next five years.

Khosru has formalised this vision into what he calls the 3R Strategy: one year of recovery and stabilisation, up to three years of restoration, and a five-year horizon for reconstruction and acceleration. The budget currently before parliament is merely R1 -- the year the bleeding stops and the patient is stabilised.

The economic growth target for the coming fiscal year is pegged at 6.5 percent -- an optimistic acceleration after years of sluggishness. It is a high-stakes wager that the government’s deregulation push, a hoped-for revival in investment, and the clearing of political skies will rapidly translate into economic momentum. Meanwhile, the goal of containing inflation at 7.5 percent should be read as a sober admission, not a promise of relief.

The targets set for 2031 are highly specific and fiercely ambitious. The government aims for 8.5 percent growth, 5 percent inflation, and total investment reaching 40 percent of GDP. Most daunting of all, the plan seeks to quadruple foreign direct investment to 2.7 percent of GDP -- a steep hurdle for a nation that has historically struggled to attract foreign capital.

“The time has come to discard the debt-driven growth model of the past and build a self-sustaining economy driven by production, employment, and private investment,” Khosru told parliament.

Whether any of this grand vision materialises depends entirely on the most stubborn metric in national life: the tax line.

The government aims to collect Tk 6,95,000 crore in revenue, requiring an 18 percent jump from the outgoing fiscal year’s revised target. For a country with the lowest tax collection rate in the region, this is a Herculean goal. The history of revenue in Bangladesh is, overwhelmingly, a history of targets missed.

Yet, counterintuitively, the government shied away from raising tax rates. Corporate taxes remain frozen, and the personal exemption threshold actually rises. The strategy relies instead on collecting tax from those who currently pay nothing at all.

Tax refunds are slated to become “automated and faceless”. This is not merely a bureaucratic upgrade; it is an anti-corruption measure designed to end the across-the-desk negotiations where bribes traditionally change hands. Audits will now be triggered by risk algorithms rather than an assessor’s intuition about who can afford to settle. Small traders will receive a simplified, flat-rate tax. Crucially, the entire tax schedule will be published five years forward, allowing a businessperson to finally plan past the next June surprise.

Will the government be able to raise enough money in a mere 12 months? Almost certainly not. Compliance reforms pay dividends over years, while budget goals are relentlessly assessed in quarters. Still, there is a flicker of hope: the outgoing fiscal year’s collections were revised upward, actually beating the original target.

Then there is the deficit, and the question of who fills it. Equivalent to 3.6 percent of GDP -- a figure certain to please the International To boost

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