On development expenditure
Last week I discussed non-development expenditure by Bangladesh government. This post is going to cover development expenditure. As usual, I’ll use a set of charts – like the posts on revenue and development expenditure, the data are from the Ministry of Finance and CEIC Asia.
Typically, the discussion on development expenditure in Bangladesh goes like this: the government (and its allies in the civil society and media) says “look, record annual development programme (ADP)”, while the opposition and skeptical pundits say “you never achieve your ADP target, and you’ll fail again this year”. Who’s right?
Where does the money go?
Firstly, programming note – the dastardly microbes, together with nefarious carbon monoxide, continue to wreck havoc with my respiratory system, so posting will continue to be sporadic.
And now to the actual post.
A few weeks ago, I noted that government revenue performance in Bangladesh has been pretty good in recent years. As if to prove that no good deed goes unpunished in Bangladesh, the NBR chief appears to be in trouble. Meanwhile, what’s been happening at the other side of the Budget ledger?
This, and possibly a couple of other, posts will cover government expenditure. In Bangladesh (and a number of developing countries), expenditure is divided into two parts – development and non-development. This post is about non-development expenditure. This is basically what the government spends on day-to-day functioning of the state machinery.
Growth forecasts: ADB vs the Budget
Updated: 4 July 2012, 1213 BDT: Export growth chart over the fold.
The last post on the subject showed that the difference between the ADB’s and the government’s growth forecast is now at its widest in the last decade. While the government expects the economy to accelerate sharply in 2012-13 (FY13) to 7.2% (the thick red line in the chart), the ADB expects a slowdown to growth of 6% (thick red dots).
There seem to be two major reasons why the forecasts diverge — one explicit, and one implicit.
Growth forecasts in 2012-13 Budget
Mr Muhith brought down his fourth budget last week. For his first three budgets, I published a number of articles with my erstwhile Drishtipat colleagues (note to self: set up an archive of published analysis). These days, I prefer to focus on the blog. So instead of writing op eds for the Daily Star or BDnews24, I’ll do a number of posts over the next few weeks. Dear reader, this means I am writing exclusively for you. 
The typical analysis of the Budget one sees in the media does not look at the past performance. And yet, analysis of how the government’s previous Budget forecasts turned out is a good way to judge the current forecasts. Using a set of charts, this post focusses on the government’s successive forecasts of GDP growth.
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