Economic Reporter :
The government has proposed expanding the existing VAT exemption for the country’s Information and Communications Technology and mobile phone manufacturing and assembly industry to allow them to flourish further.
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal made the proposal while placing his Tk 6,03,681 crore proposed budget for 2021-22 fiscal year, before parliament on Thursday.
In his proposal, the minister said existing tax exemption benefits for 22 Information Technology Enabled Services (ITeS) will be expanded while tax exemptions, subject to certain conditions, will be allowed for 10 years on production of some selective IT hardware if manufactured in Bangladesh.
“This will give impetus to the digital transformation process of Bangladesh, will make modern digital services easily available to the citizens at a low cost, and will also make a positive impact in materialising the dream of building a digital Bangladesh,” Kamal told the parliament.
The proposed tax exemption for ITeS will be applicable for cloud services, system integration, e-learning platforms, e-book publication, mobile application development services and IT freelancing until 2024.
At the same time, the finance minister proposed expansion of the existing VAT exemption facility on manufacturing and assembling of mobile phones in the country for two more years. “At present most of the mobile phones sold in the local market are either manufactured or assembled in our country,” the minister informed during his speech.
Meanwhile, VAT exemption on local manufacturing will be applicable for printers, toner cartridges, inkjet cartridges, parts of computer printers, computers, laptops, AIO, desktops, notebooks, notepads, tabs, keyboards, mouses, barcode/QR scanners, RAM, PCBA/motherboards, power banks, routers, network switches, network devices/hubs, speakers, sound systems, earphones, headphones, Solid-State Device (SSD)/portable SSD, hard drives, pen drives, micro SD cards, flash memory cards, CCTVs, monitors (not exceeding 22″), projectors, printed circuit boards, e-writing pads, USB cables, data cable, digital watches, and loaded PCBs.
