BNP Standing Committee member Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury on Monday dismissed the proposed national budget as merely extending the previous government’s problematic fiscal approach without substantive reforms.
Speaking ahead of BNP’s scheduled June 4 budget press conference at their Gulshan office, Khosru stated: “As an interim administration’s budget, expectations were modest – yet it fails to address core economic issues even within that limited scope.”
The senior opposition leader criticised the budget’s inflated size, stating that operational expenses consume all revenue, forcing development expenditures to rely entirely on domestic and foreign borrowing. He warned that this approach would trigger severe consequences – mounting debt burdens, soaring interest payments, and squeezed private sector credit access.
Highlighting structural flaws, he remarked that there had been no qualitative transformation beyond mere “numeral tweaks”. The BNP leader particularly questioned budget sustainability amid $3.5 billion external debt obligations, arguing for smaller, realistic fiscal planning.
Khosru concluded that the proposal offers negligible economic revival prospects while creating minefields for any future elected government.