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The success of the 2003-04 budget will depend on ensuring full implementation of the Annual Development Programme (ADP), improvement in export sector, growth in private investment in manufacturing sector and reducing cost of capital. This was viewed by the speakers at a dialogue on "State of Bangladesh Economy FY03 and Budget Response FY04" organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) at the CIRDAP auditorium Thursday.

They said there is a need for ensuring supportive credit, stability in the macroeconomic indicators and supportive policy measures to create an enabling investment atmosphere and reduce cost of capital. The speakers were critical of the big size of the new ADP for fiscal 2003-04 despite failing to meet the targets of the current fiscal's ADP.

"In the backdrop of a poor performance in implementation of the outgoing fiscal's ADP involving Tk 171 billion, a Tk. 203 billion ADP for the next fiscal is not realistic", CPD chairman Rehman Sobhan said. Responding to the Rehman Sobhan's comment, prominent economist Momtazuddin Ahmed aired his optimism that the implementation process of the ADP would improve in the 2003-04 fiscal. CPD Executive Director Debapriya Bhattacharya presented the keynote paper at the dialogue.

He said the 2003-04 budget with its investment portfolio and fiscal measures seeks to take the economy from a "low-level equilibrium" to a "high-level equilibrium. "There is a need for efficient macro-economic management capacity to do that, he observed. "Without removal of the micro-level impediments to investment, ranging from low efficiency of public utilities and financial system to lack of security for life and property, dysfunctional judicial process and pervasive corruption, the anticipated supply-side responses will be hardly forthcoming," he said. Commenting on the 2003-04 national budget, speakers also found a big mismatch in the expenditure projection and the revenue earnings.