The budget session of Jatiya Sangsad (JS) was prorogued Tuesday with Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Choudhury urging the treasury bench and opposition members to uphold democracy by participating in the JS proceedings.

"The budget session of the JS became lively with the active participation of treasury and opposition lawmakers . . . their valuable opinion played a significant role to make the budget for fiscal 2013-14 more constructive," she said while delivering concluding address at the 18th session of the 9th parliament.

The Speaker, after her concluding speech, read out the prorogation order of the President.

She said Finance Minister AMA Muhith placed the Tk 2,22,491 crore national budget for fiscal 2013-14 in the House and the size of the non-development budget was Tk 1,34,449 crore and of development budget was Tk 72,275 crore. Of the total allocation, 23 percent has been kept for human resources development, 25.4 percent for agriculture and 17.2 percent for power and energy sectors, she added.

The Speaker said over 66 percent allocation has been given to social, infrastructure and general service sectors which would help expedite over all development of the country. Specific targets have been set for the development of education, social safety net, agriculture, health, women development, rural development, infrastructure, power and energy which would play a significant role for the development of the country, she added.

She congratulated the lawmakers for taking part in the discussion on the budget and hoped that the lawmakers of the treasury bench and opposition would continue to play their constructive role in the House in future.

It was the first session of Shirin Sharmin after she was elected the Speaker of the JS. This session was also featured by the opposition BNP's return to the house after prolonged absence.

Giving salient features of the 18th session of the parliament, she said total 218 members of Parliament took part in 61 hours and 13 minutes of discussion in the main budget and supplementary budget in 24 working days.

Side by side with making laws, a total of 216 notices under Rule 71 of the Rules of the Procedures were received and of Them, 9 were accepted.

The Speaker said movers of 45 notices got the opportunity to speak for two minutes each under rule 71 (a) of the Rules of Procedure.

She said a total of 190 questions were received for the Prime Minister's question-answer time and she responded to 60 including the supplementary questions.

Earlier, Leader of the House and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gave her valedictory speech.

Ends/AMA/16/07/13