Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation, for the first time, has recently imported 20,000 tonnes of furnace oil from an overseas supplier under duty and tax waiver, said BPC’s director for operation and planning Sayed Mohammad Haque.
He added a cargo carrying the said quantity of furnace oil reached Chittagong port on Tuesday. The private sector has been getting such duty free import facility since January 26, 2011.
Import cost of furnace oil of the state-run BPC will decline at least by Tk 9 per litre to Tk 33 per litre from the current price of Tk 42 following the tax and duty waiver by the NBR, said BPC’s marketing director Mir Ali Reza.
The entrepreneurs of the country’s private sector power plants have been enjoying the duty and tax waiver facility exclusively since January 26, 2011.A gazette notification issued by the Ministry of Finance during the time stated that the furnace oil to be used in both private and public sector power plants for electricity generation would get duty and tax waiver.
Before enjoying facility, the importers had to certify that the furnace oil to be imported duty-and tax-free would be used for electricity generation, as per the government notification.
Although the BPC was also supposed to enjoy similar facility of importing furnace oil duty-free as per the gazette notification, the NBR had put restrictions on it alleging that the corporation had huge unpaid dues to it, a senior NBR official said.
Riding on escalated profit against oil trading, the BPC, however, cleared all dues worth Tk 271 billion last year, which included outstanding value added tax (VAT) and import duties to the NBR.
Officials said the BPC had to pay 12 per cent customs duty and 15 per cent VAT at the import stage before withdrawal of the NBR’s restrictions. They said the BPC has long been seeking duty and tax waiver on import of furnace oil and restoration of its rights to import the entire quantity of the fuel and supply it to power plants to ‘check pilferage and ensure efficient management.’
The government has also been providing 9.0 per cent service charge along with import costs to the private oil importers as an incentive, the official said.
As a consequence, the BPC’s furnace oil import fell drastically by around 60 per cent to 481,673 tonnes in 2016 from over 1.0 million tonnes in 2013.
