A 58-page budget: Complete but concise

The national budget for FY2025-26 read out today (2 June) is different from the previous one in key focuses and priorities, making a shift from growth- and mega project-focused to a people-centric one, as the finance adviser coined. 

The budget speech for FY26 is different in text size as well. 

Finance Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed concluded his entire budget projections in 58 pages, way smaller than the 174-page text placed on 6 June last year for the current FY2024-25. If annexures are included, the Bangla speech was 210 pages long.

This is the 54th budget since the country's independence and the first of this interim government that took over after the fall of Sheikh Hasina and her government on 5 August last year through a mass uprising.

Salehuddin's budget speech is concise, telling all about the budget without using unnecessary words, praises, pledges, and jargon, which usually filled dozens of pages in previous years and made budget speeches a boring and tiresome exercise.

The interim government, the adviser said, looks to implement the dream of the July Uprising to build a beautiful, liveable place for the next generation and bring a far-reaching change in people's lives.

"We have tried to craft this budget to achieve that goal," he said in his televised budget speech.

He kept his speech limited to specific policy steps to create jobs, tame inflation, and encourage investment, and tried to make the tax and duty parts of the speech simple and legible.

The post-independence government's Finance Minister Tajuddin Ahmed's budget speech in 1972 is regarded as one of the most precise in Bangladesh.

He had placed the country's first annual outlay of Tk786 crore to rebuild the war-ravaged newborn country.