2024-04-22 12:35:09
The government plans to increase the price of electricity and energy products in the budget of the next financial year 2024-2025 and reduce the subsidy in this sector. According to related sources, the amount of subsidy can be brought down below one lakh crore rupees.
According to sources, efforts are being made to keep the amount of subsidy given in various sectors within 90 thousand crore rupees in the next financial year. In the budget of the current fiscal year 2023-2024, the subsidy amount was 1 lakh 10 thousand crores. Later, in the revised budget, it was proposed to reduce the amount to 98 thousand crores.
Sources from the Finance Department have informed that the most subsidy will be given in the electricity sector in the next financial year. The amount of which is 35 thousand crores. Next is the agriculture sector. 25 thousand crores of subsidy is proposed in this sector. 7 thousand 825 crores will be given as export incentives. 7,000 crore rupees to be subsidized in the imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector. Subsidy in food sector will be 7000 crore rupees. And remittance incentives will require a subsidy of Tk 6,200 crore.
In this regard, an official of the finance department said that the budget monitoring and resource management committee meeting held in the last week of last month discussed the issue of subsidy. A lot of concern has been expressed in the meeting about the issue of excessive subsidy pressure. It has also recommended a rapid increase in electricity, fertilizer and water prices to reduce subsidies.
It has been said that the economy cannot bear such pressure of subsidy in the existing economic conditions. Although positive attitude has been shown from the higher level of the government regarding the increase in the price of electricity and water, it has been informed that it is not possible to increase the price of fertilizer at the moment. But increasing the price of electricity and reducing the allocation of expenditure in the incentive sector will drag down the subsidy rush. For this reason, the price of petroleum along with electricity and LNG will be increased. Already the work of increasing the price of electricity is being done step by step. Regarding the allocation of 35 thousand crores of subsidy in the power sector in the next financial year, he said, contrary to the demand of the Ministry of Energy and Power, we are not able to pay the subsidy money regularly. We are already six months behind in paying the subsidy. So much money is being earmarked for subsidy on electricity to ‘carry over’ or pay arrears.
Note that the amount of subsidy is increasing every year. For example, in the fiscal year 2020-2021, the subsidy sector was allocated 47 thousand 500 crores. Earlier in the financial year 2019-2020 it was 42 thousand 100 crores. 37 thousand 800 crores in the fiscal year 2018-2019. In the budget of the previous fiscal year (2017-2018), the allocation for subsidies, cash assistance, incentives was 28 thousand 45 crores; Which is 1.3 percent of the total GDP. In the budget of the previous financial year, the allocation for this sector was 26 thousand 729 crores, which is 1.2 percent of the total GDP. However, in the revised budget, the amount of this subsidy was reduced to 23 thousand 830 crores. Earlier, in the budget of 2015-2016 fiscal year, 14 thousand 418 crores was allocated for subsidy.