Presided over by Comrade Sultan Ahmed Biswas, Convener of Pragotisheel Krishok Sangram Parishad, Member Secretary and President of Bangladesh Krishok Federation Comrade Badrul Alam, Executive Committee Member and Joint Secretary of Jatya Krishak Jote, Kamruzzaman Fossi, Women Leaders Ambia Khatun Sheela and Pinki Akhtar spoke at the meeting.

In the meeting, the leaders expressed deep concern as there was no specific guidance on inflation and employment in the newly announced budget of the government and called for a revised budget to be announced on the basis of reassessment by taking necessary measures to prevent corruption, looting, money laundering abroad and tax evasion by big companies with special emphasis on the agriculture sector.

In the meeting, the leaders called for increasing and continuing the subsidy in the agricultural sector and said that the allocation in the agricultural sector is insufficient compared to the overall size of the proposed budget. But in the current global and national context, the agriculture sector should have been given the most importance. With the aim of achieving prosperity in agriculture, they called for the availability of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer, electricity, water, seeds, etc., for the development of region based agriculture industry. In the interest of protecting agriculture and farmers, the leaders proposed to stop the import of some agricultural products from abroad and to make the production of domestic agricultural crops affordable and accessible to the consumer.

The leaders urged the government to keep all types of educational materials including books, notebooks, pencils free from tax and said that education cannot be commercialized and the ongoing process of commercialization must be stopped.

In the meeting, they strongly demanded to introduce a universal rationing system to overcome the miserable life of people during the current market instability. The leaders criticized the announcement of Tk. 2,000/- income-free minimum tax announced in the budget and said that it is contradictory to impose tax on those who have been kept within the tax-free income limit. They demanded cancellation of the minimum tax proposal of Tk. 2000/-.

Dated 9 June 2023

News Sender
Badrul Alam
Member Secretary
Pragatisheel Krishak Sangram Parishad