What the FY2026-27 budget actually says.

The FY2026-27 revenue target of Tk 695,000 crore is 23.2% above the FY2025-26 target of Tk 564,000 crore. Measured against what was actually collected in FY2023-24 (Tk 409,812 crore), the target requires revenue to grow at 19.3% a year for three years running, while nominal GDP over the same window grows at 10.9% a year. Revenue has to outpace the economy by roughly 8.4 percentage points a year, every year, for the arithmetic to close.

Recent history points the other way: the FY2024-25 revenue budget was marked down 4.3% at revision.

The tax component carries the load: Tk 629,000 crore against Tk 369,776 crore collected in FY2023-24, a required 19.4% annual growth rate (NBR's entire FY2023-24 collection was Tk 361,452 crore).

Total outlay rises from Tk 790,000 crore budgeted in FY2025-26 to Tk 938,000 crore, an 18.7% increase against an implied nominal GDP growth of 9.4%. The budget therefore moves expenditure from 12.7% of GDP to 13.7%: a deliberate fiscal expansion, not a steady-state budget.

An expansion of this size is only as real as its financing. Whether it materialises depends directly on Finding 1: if revenue lands short, the historical adjustment channel is the development budget.

The FY2025-26 budget set interest payments at Tk 122,000 crore, 21.6% of that year's revenue target. Every deficit-financed taka in FY2026-27 adds to this fixed claim before a single school or hospital is funded, which is the structural cost of the expansion in Finding 2.

The most recent completed revision cycle cut the FY2024-25 expenditure budget by 6.6% and the revenue budget by 4.3%. The cut was not spread evenly: the development programme took it, with the FY2024-25 ADP marked down 18.5% at revision. That is the adjustment channel Finding 2 warns about. Read the FY2026-27 totals as a ceiling, not a forecast: the revised budget of February-March 2027 is where intent meets capacity.

What to watch, in order: monthly NBR collection against the run-rate the target implies; ADP implementation reports from IMED; and the size of the FY2026-27 revised budget when it lands.