As part of the multifarious initiatives to tackle the prevailing volatile dollar market, the government has slapped regulatory duty on import of non-essential and luxurious goods. The national Board of Revenue (NBR) issued a statutory regulatory order in this regard on Monday night.
Aimed at discouraging imports, the regularity duty on fruits, flowers and cosmetics has been raised to 23 per cent from just 3 per cent. Because of this move, the prices of more than 100 products under these three categories will increase as traders will have to pay extra duty to import them, say officials. Usually, the imposition of additional tariffs on any product is decided by the government in the budget. But this time the government has taken this decision just 15 days before the proposed national budget placement for fiscal 2022-23. The finance minister is going to place the budget in the Parliament on 9 June.
Reportedly, the customs wing of the NBR makes the move attuned to government austerity measures aimed at keeping country’s foreign-exchange reserves stable — evidently in the wake of a global financial and commodity-supply-chain crises as well as continuing depreciation of the local currency against the US dollar. Officials said Bangladesh ramps up belt-tightening measures through this fiscal intervention and relaxing remittance rules. The Bangladesh Bank Monday also issued a circular that from now on migrant workers can get the incentives without submitting any document to the exchange houses abroad and this provision will be available “until further notice”. The move comes in the wake of substantial decline in the remittance inflows. The country’s foreign exchange reserves also dropped nearly $42 billion for increase in import payments from 48.04 billion in August last year
It is to be noted that the high officials in the finance ministry, the central bank and NBR held a number of meetings on the recent economic situation in recent times to devise strategies to tackle the situation as a number of other South Asian countries are also going through economic stress.
As Sri Lanka became an international debt defaulter with reserves plummeting to naught — Pakistan imposed a complete ban on the import of non-essential and luxury items as part of an emergency economic plan to stabilise its tenuous economy. In Bangladesh, we think imposition of regulatory duty will help bring some revenue and discourage import of luxurious products automatically.
