Six months ago, the BNP promised economic recovery, job creation, banking reform, stronger social protection and the reconstruction of state institutions.
Its manifesto reflected the ambitions of a party seeking office, before those ambitions encountered the constraints of governing.
Thursday’s proposed budget reveals what happened next.
Presented before Parliament as the FY2026-27 budget, the document broadly follows the manifesto’s direction, prioritising private investment, economic recovery, employment, social protection and business reform while navigating an economy still burdened by high inflation, weak revenue collection and a fragile banking system.
But it also does what every budget eventually does: it forces a choice. And in the choices it makes, a hierarchy of priorities becomes visible.
Recovery moved to the front of the queue. Structural reform moved further back.
One of the clearest alignments between the manifesto and the budget lies in the government’s push to revive private-sector-led growth.
The election manifesto repeatedly identified investment, entrepreneurship and business expansion as the principal engines of future prosperity, and the budget follows that blueprint closely.
A broad deregulation agenda seeks to reduce the cost of doing business through automated tax and VAT administration, customs reforms, expansion of bonded warehouse facilities and faster regulatory approvals.
The government has also announced a Tk60,000 crore package to revive closed and distressed industrial and service-sector enterprises, alongside a Tk500 crore startup fund targeted at young entrepreneurs.
Taken together, the measures leave little doubt about where the government has placed its highest economic bets.
Social protection is another area where manifesto commitments appear to have translated directly into funding decisions.
The budget expands support for safety-net programmes and vulnerable groups, reflecting the manifesto’s emphasis on protecting lower-income households through a period of economic adjustment.
Agriculture also remains a visible beneficiary, with continued support for production, food security and rural livelihoods.
Employment and banking reform illustrate both the strengths and limits of the budget’s alignment with the manifesto.
Both featured prominently in the party’s election platform and both receive substantial attention in the budget.
Employment is supported through industrial revival schemes, startup financing, skills-development initiatives and investment incentives, while banking reform remains a recurring theme throughout the government’s economic agenda.
Yet the budget is clearer about direction than delivery. It reinforces the government’s commitment to job creation and financial sector repair but provides limited detail on how progress will be measured, how quickly key reforms will be implemented or what outcomes are expected over the medium term.
Capital market development appears to have moved further down the priority list. Although the budget discusses corporate bonds, green bonds, sukuk and municipal bonds, it offers little evidence of a broader strategy to transform the capital market into a significant source of long-term financing.
As a result, the government’s growth strategy continues to rely heavily on a banking system that is itself undergoing reform.
The choices the government made were shaped by circumstances that did not exist when the manifesto was written. Inflation remains elevated.
Revenue collection remains weak, with the tax-to-GDP ratio among the lowest in comparable economies. The banking sector remains fragile.
Debt-servicing costs continue to rise.
Against that backdrop, the government’s room for manoeuvre was considerably narrower than the manifesto’s language had suggested.
Ashikur Rahman, principal economist at the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, told TIMES that the budget marks an important shift away from the contractionary policy framework of the past two years towards a more expansionary, growth-oriented strategy.
He cautioned, however, that inflation, banking-sector stress, weak export growth and limited fiscal capacity continue to pose significant risks to implementation.
Fahmida Khatun, executive director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, framed the challenge in similar terms. The biggest weakness of the proposed budget is not its objectives but the state’s ability to deliver them, she told TIMES.
The government had correctly identified many of the country’s economic challenges and outlined measures to address them, she said, but warned that institutional capacity remains insufficient to ensure effective implementation.
In that gap between intention and execution lies the budget’s most consequential vulnerability.
