NBR seeks businesses support to increase tax-GDP ratio

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Economic Reporter :
National Board of Revenue (NBR) on Wednesday sought the supports of the business community to increase the tax-GDP ratio for sustaining the country’s development.
“Growing GDP is mostly attributable to the flourishing of investment and business. As we need more investment, we have to increase tax base and make our people tax compliance,” said NBR Chairman M Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan.
The NBR chairman said this while speaking as the chief guest at the ‘Quarterly Luncheon Meeting’ of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) in the city.
Mosharraf Hossain, also senior secretary of the Internal Resources Division, called upon the business community to work together for accelerating the country’s investment, trade and export to maintain the steady economic growth.
To maintain the existing economic growth, he said, the government will have to increase revenue collection. He said the government is likely to reduce the corporate tax in the upcoming national budget as per the demand of business community.
“We are thinking about corporate tax and multilayer divided issues that have come up in the discussions with Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), MCCI and others trade bodies,” he added.
Though the new VAT law has been postponed for next two years, Mosharraf Hossain said, collection of Value Added Tax (VAT) is going on.
“We are trying to make it convenient to the business persons. Instead of one rate, we will experiment several rates,” he added.
Responding to the demand of the business community, he said, the government will give bond facilities for export oriented new products.
Among others, MCCI President Nihad Kabir also spoke on the occasion.
Nihad Kabir said the aspects of revenue collection in Bangladesh still remain dependent on indirect taxes, import duties, excise duties and other supplementary duties.
In this budget, she said, MCCI would like to see necessary steps to boost the economy.
“We would opt for an improvement of physical infrastructure, including electricity and fuel allocation. We would also prefer to have a reflection of the necessary education and skills development, including electricity and fuel allocation,” she added.
She said there should be a focus on building specialized economic zones, including projects that benefit industries such as high-tech IT park, leather village with active central effluent treatment plant, pharmaceutical industry, the API parks and low-cost broadband connections.
“In order to aid all these projects to come to fruition, we will need to work together and have to start right now to achieve some synergistic effects,” she added.
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