Manufacturing sector to get tax facilities in next budget: NBR

FT ONLINE

Country's manufacturing sector will be given tax facilities in the upcoming budget for fiscal year 2018-19 (FY19) as part of the government's plan for expansion of the local industrial sector, said NBR chairman Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan.

"We want to give tax facilities to some more sectors in the next budget as such facilities in the past helped boost production and exports in some sectors. Budget will be prepared this time offering tax facilities for manufacturing sector," said the National Board of Revenue (NBR) while speaking at pre-budget talks in Dhaka on Wednesday.

Representatives from different organisations in the electronics and electrical, computer and ICT and telecommunication sectors joined the pre- budget talks held at the NBR's Segunbagicha office.

Bhuiyan said priority will be given to protect the local industries.

Those who are flooding local market with imported substandard products need to be controlled, he said, adding, "We want to protect local industries by giving them tax facilities".

Hinting at cutting the corporate tax, the NBR chairman said businesspeople are requesting to cut corporate tax saying that it will not only help boost revenue income but discourage tax dodging.

"We're thinking to do something in this regard . . . we'll try to adjust all these," he added.

The NBR chairman disagreed with the claim of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) that there will be a shortfall of Taka 50,000 crore in revenue mobilization in the current fiscal (FY18) and said there will be a shortfall in revenue collection but it will not be so high.

"NBR has a target to collect Taka 2.48 lakh crore and the collection trend in the last nine months of the current fiscal year (FY18) was comparatively good," he added.

Mobile phone importers' association president Md Ruhul Alam Al Mahbub said Bangladesh is on the way of becoming mobile set manufacturer and demanded withdrawal of existing import duty (ranging from one percent to 10 percent) on the mobile set manufacturing raw materials.

In reply, Bhuiyan said the NBR is encouraging manufacturing sector and facilities will be offered in this sector through formulating a policy.

President of Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) Syed Almas Kabir demanded withdrawal of Value Added Tax (VAT) on the use of internet at all level.

He also proposed to give software developers and ICT service providers tax exemption certificate for the next five years.

At present, software developers and ICT service providers have to collect tax exemption certificate every year.