Representative from civil society and some social organisations demanded the government to initiate budget formulation from district level to make the next national budget a democratic and pro-poor one. They termed the present budget formulation process undemocratic. Calling it also discriminatory, they also affirmed that any budget formulation without ensuring people’s active participation can not be democratic and therefore it will surely fail to reflect people’s demand.
ActionAid, in collaboration with Governance Coalition and seven divisional civil society organisations, organised a convention titled National Budget 2010 on Democratic Budget Movement held on Sunday at Shahid Amin Khan Memorial Hall of BIAM Foundation. Social Welfare Minister M Enamul Huq Mostafa was present as chief guest while the programme was chaired by M Hafizuddin Khan, former Adviser to the Caretaker Government and also former Auditor and Comptroller General.
ActioAid Country Director Farah Kabir moderated the inaugural ceremony of the daylong programme that also includes a number of view-sharing meetings where public representatives from across the country lifted the problem of their communities.
Social Welfare Minister, M Enamul Huq Mostafa said that the process of budget formulation has now become more transparent and democratic as the government used to give a hint about the size of the budget and also sector-wise allocation well-ahead of the budget declaration. “Such sharing encourages rigorous discussion and debates around the issue which helps the government assess people’s expectation and thereby create scope for incorporating their demands in the budget,” Enamul Huq Mostafa said.
He assured that the present government, which assumed power with people’s mandate, would not formulate any budget taking people’s demand into no account.
Former adviser M Hafizuddin opined that practice of keeping itself aloof from budget discussion by the main opposition impedes the democratic process of budget formulation. He underscored the need for conducting social audit for the budget that will be conducted by the common people and also suggested strong monitoring of budget utilisation.
Dr M Farashuddin, chairman of Bangladesh Unnayan Parisad, stressed the need for designing proper plan during budget formulation to ensure equal distribution of our limited resource among the marginalised poor people.
The experts at the programme underscored the need for a decentralised government system to ensure an overall development of the country and termed further strengthening of local government as a key to a decentralised government.
The participants placed a 30-point recommendation before the government to make the national budget more democratic.
Some of the key proposals include: clear direction about making district-level budget in the 2010-11 fiscal budget; ensuring minimum 10 percent allocation from the GDP for the education, health and other social sector; and enactment of Food Security Act instead of Social Safety-net Programme and create adequate fund for scale up national employment opportunity.
Some nine representatives from different part of the country who presented their regional demand are Minhajul Islam, hailed from Chittagong, Dr Mizanur Rahman from Barisal, Khalid Hossain from Khulna, Mushfeka Razzak from Rangpur, Hasan Millat from Rajshahi, Advocate Habibuzzaman Khurram from greater Mymensingh and Muktadur Ahmed from Sylhet haor area.
The New Nation
