Budget built on trust can unlock citizen-led growth

A budget tells us what a government believes its people can do. This one belief is a great deal, and that is the real news in it. 

After years in which the state expanded while enterprise queued for permission, this budget signals a government willing to step back and allow citizens to step forward.

The numbers are large. At Tk9.38 lakh crore, this is the biggest budget Bangladesh has ever had, almost a fifth higher than last year. But its size is the least interesting part. The theme matters more: economic democratisation and deregulation, with a trillion-dollar economy as the destination.

That idea is visible where policy meets daily economic life. A licence that once took months is now promised in seven days through a single window. Trade and logistics, long constrained by layers of permission, are being opened up. Corporate tax rates remain unchanged, which is often worth more to investors than any clever incentive, because certainty is among the rarest currencies in the economy.

Each move carries the same message: a Bangladeshi with a plan is an asset to be freed, not a risk to be policed.

The next test of that belief is money. A deregulated economy needs a financial system broad enough to fund it, and ours remains far too narrow. Businesses depend heavily on banks for capital, while the government relies on the same banks to finance its deficit.

Of the Tk2.43 lakh crore the government must borrow this year, most of the domestic share is expected to come from the banking sector, because ordinary citizens have almost no practical way to lend to their own country. One set of shoulders is carrying both the economy and the state.

Widening that circle is what democratisation should mean.

A shopkeeper in Bogura should be able to buy a government bond from the same phone she uses to send money home — in small amounts, at a rate she can see. She earns a fair return, the state gains a voluntary lender, and banks are freed to support enterprise.

Bangladesh is readier for this than many assume. The country has 80 million mobile money accounts, $30 billion in remittances a year, and a sovereign sukuk that drew 11 times the bids on offer. The appetite is already here. What has been missing is the invitation.

A caution is necessary, offered as a friend of the project. Deregulation lives or dies on delivery.

A single window that takes 30 days instead of seven is simply the old delay in a new suit. Bangladesh has rarely been short of good intentions at budget time; it has often been short of follow-through.

A revenue target raised by a third, after a year that already fell short, will test that capacity. The direction is right. Execution is everything now.

A budget that trusts its people also asks them to be worthy of that trust. That is the bargain here, and it is the best one this country has been offered in years.

No state builds a trillion-dollar economy by itself. It clears the road, sets fair rules and lets a hundred million ambitions do the rest.