FOREIGN magazines as such Time, the Economist, Fortune and India Today are regularly smuggled into the country by dishonest businessmen causing huge revenue loss to the government and also to the country’s registered import houses. The owner of a registered firm has brought the issue to the notice of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) complaining that smuggled Indian magazines are entering into the country ignoring government rules and mostly evading the eyes of the Customs and payment of tax and VAT. What is more visible is that their readers at the higher level of the society are routinely collecting their copies from those illegal sources at low cost, no matter they are smuggled in reading materials having wider ramifications in socio-cultural fields. The lackluster attitude of the NBR to such illegal trade also calls for proper attention.
Smugglers mainly bring in these materials from India where publishers can quote lower price than production cost because of a vast subscriber market and also with support from huge advertisement bills of big business houses. Import of foreign magazines in Bangladesh from other countries appears to be highly expensive because their formally quoted selling prices are much higher than Indian publishers’ prices. So Indian publishers are in a better position to push in low cost supplies to Bangladesh and much of it is smuggled in.
It is no more secrets this is how India is capturing Bangladesh market in one hand and destroying business of local publishers and authorized importers of reading materials on the other. Local importers are losing buyers every day and regularly counting losses, because more buyers go to the shops selling smuggled in materials at low cost than to shops run by authorized importers where prices are apparently high.
Even when some government offices buy magazines under public tender, they invite low cost tender without knowing or caring to know whether they are formally imported reading materials or smuggled in materials. Local business houses said since they buy at higher cost, they can’t sell all copies and their business has become uneven business with smugglers. One owner said selling illegally imported magazines is illegal in the country and yet the government is buying it and tolerating its circulation.
In our view the government must strengthen Customs vigilance against smuggled in reading materials; it must stop. We also want to say that prices of imported magazines and periodicals must be held in check to keep them affordable to readers.
Smugglers mainly bring in these materials from India where publishers can quote lower price than production cost because of a vast subscriber market and also with support from huge advertisement bills of big business houses. Import of foreign magazines in Bangladesh from other countries appears to be highly expensive because their formally quoted selling prices are much higher than Indian publishers’ prices. So Indian publishers are in a better position to push in low cost supplies to Bangladesh and much of it is smuggled in.
It is no more secrets this is how India is capturing Bangladesh market in one hand and destroying business of local publishers and authorized importers of reading materials on the other. Local importers are losing buyers every day and regularly counting losses, because more buyers go to the shops selling smuggled in materials at low cost than to shops run by authorized importers where prices are apparently high.
Even when some government offices buy magazines under public tender, they invite low cost tender without knowing or caring to know whether they are formally imported reading materials or smuggled in materials. Local business houses said since they buy at higher cost, they can’t sell all copies and their business has become uneven business with smugglers. One owner said selling illegally imported magazines is illegal in the country and yet the government is buying it and tolerating its circulation.
In our view the government must strengthen Customs vigilance against smuggled in reading materials; it must stop. We also want to say that prices of imported magazines and periodicals must be held in check to keep them affordable to readers.
