DHAKA, July 9, 2020 (BSS) – The 8th (second budget) session of 11th parliament was prorogued today after only nine sittings as it was a short parliament session in history of the country amid widespread COVID-19 transmission across the world including Bangladesh.
This was a brief budget session as only two days were allotted for holding discussions on the budget for 2020-21 fiscal. The discussions on supplementary budget 2019-20 were held just for one day.
On June 11, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal presented the second budget of the present government with an outlay of Taka 5,68,000 crore.
The government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina placed the budget amid the global coronavirus pandemic aiming to recover the fragile economic situation of the country and setting a GDP target of 8.2 per cent for the current fiscal.
A total of sixteen MPs—10 from treasury bench, 3 Jatiya party lawmakers and each one from BNP, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal(JASAD) and Bangladesher Workers party, took part in the budget discussions and they talked for around five hours and 18 minutes.
Only six parliament members took part in the supplementary budget discussion.
Apart from this, a total of sixteen bills were placed and only five were passed in this session.
Along with the enactment of the law, twelve notices have been received under section 71 of the rules of procedure.
About twenty-six questions were fixed for the Prime Minister while she answered eleven questions during the question-answer session.
All together 156 questions out of 410 were answered by different ministers during the question-answer session fixed for different ministries.
Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury read out the prorogation order of the President around 01:33pm.
Before reading out the prorogation order, the Speaker thanked all the MPs of treasury and opposition benches for reaching a consensus in the House in upholding parliamentary democratic practices.
Speaker Shirin Sharmin thanked all the MPs, officials, journalists, law enforcers and fire service and civil defence personnel for their services for smoothly holding the parliament session.
As per the plan to maintain social distancing rule, fewer MPs attended the session compared to any normal time.
Senior MPs and MPs from outside Dhaka were discouraged to attend the month-long budget session.
During the session, steps were taken to avoid public gathering in the Sangsad Bhaban and media were asked not to come to cover the session.