Staff Reporter :
Several right groups led by Equity-BD at a press conference yesterday protested the ‘Tax Evasion by Multinational Companies’ (MNCs) and urged the government to take stringent steps to stop the practice to enhance revenue collection for development.
They expressed concerns at the meeting held at Jatiya Press Club at the rate of tax
evasion and capital flight from the country under the cover of MNCs and demanded comprehensive audit of the foreign companies by the Comptroller of Auditor General office.
Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, Ahsanul Karim and Mostafa Kamal Akand of EquityBD, Monwar Mustafa of Development Synergy Institute and representatives of Online Knowledge Society, Alo, Udayan Bangladesh, DOCAP, PRAN, PASS, Prakriotojon, VOICE, Sangsapthok and Humanity were present.
They said alone a total of $402 million tax were evaded by four major mobile phone companies in Bangladesh namely Grameen Phone (Telenor), Banglalink (Orascom), Robi (Singtel) and Airtel. They are in tussle with the National Board of Revenue (NBR) in this regard and taking different tactics to avoid payment.
British American Tobacco Company has also evaded payment of around $250 million. Giving example
of government’s 3G auction they said these companies made syndicate and pressurized government to avoid competition and thereby deprived Bangladesh from its due share of revenue.
In India, the 3G auction took 33 days and the government earned $11 billion exceeding the expectation of only $7 billion. The auction was competed by some foreign companies. But in Bangladesh, everything of the auction was done by less than an hour in a set game without any competition and the government sold the license at only $515 million, even at lower than its $800 million target.
Rezaul Karim Chowdhury of EquityBD quoting the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) figure which is a Washington based research institute) said around $14 billion of capital flight from Bangladesh took place between 2001 to 2011. MNCs were at the fore fronts of the money laundering.
He said that the government must raise the issues in UN and at G20 level meeting, initiative for tax transparency agreement with other countries must be taken, inclusion of public Right to Information on MNC’s accounts must be achieved NBR capacity must be strengthen to deal with tax frauds.
