The provision stands against morality and social justice, and it is nothing but another opportunity to make the rich people richer, said economist Dr Atiur Rahman, chairman of Unnayan Samannay.

He urged the finance minister to withdraw the provision of whitening black money from the proposed budget for the FY2005-06. "It will create more disparity between the rich and the poor," Atiur felt.

He was addressing a press conference on the proposed budget organised by Unnayan Samannay in Dhaka.

He also said the provision of increasing value added tax (VAT) in the new budget will adversely affect the poor as the prices of essentials will shoot up following the collection of additional VAT.

The finance minister has fixed the earnings from VAT for the next fiscal year at Tk 12,675 crore, which is Tk 2,070 crore or 19 percent higher than the revised budget of FY2004-05, he said.

"It will assess a negative impact on the poor and the ultra-poor as everybody has to pay VAT," Atiur went on.

Terming the new budget election-oriented, Atiur said allocation for annual development programme (ADP) has been increased, but the number of projects has been cut down from 1012 to 856.

The huge money proposed for ADP, which is Tk 24500 crore, may be used mainly to please the ruling party leaders and activists in the name of development activities, he said pointing out, "It may increase corruption, break financial discipline and deteriorate governance."

He apprehended that the number of unemployed people will increase alarmingly due to the absence of any significant approach to this regard in the proposed budget.

One of the main objectives of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) is to create employment for the unemployed, he said. "But how will the government meet the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) ignoring the employment issue?" he questioned.

Atiur also criticised the government for imposing 0.25 percent duty at source on knitwear saying it will seriously hamper the normal production in knitwear industries.

He also censured the government for not taking adequate measures in the proposed budget to face the challenges of post-MFA era.

Raising question about the actual figure of GDP growth, he said the statistics shown by the government is not correct.

The government statistics showed the GDP growth at 6.27 percent in FY2003-04, which Atiur said was 6 percent.

He suggested the government to give full autonomy to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics to get the actual figures of GDP growth and other statistics properly.

On the issue of government's stand regarding the dollar reserves, he said the inflation will go up if the central bank does not release dollar in the market soon.

However, he also pointed out some positive initiatives taken in the proposed budget in different sections such as education, public service, agriculture, tax holiday, fisheries and livestock, rural development, agro-processing and agro-based industries.