Tax measures in budget to benefit private sector, industries: BCI

The Bangladesh Chamber of Industries (BCI) has said private sector and industries of the country will be benefited from the government's tax measures in the proposed budget for 2021-22 fiscal year.

The government gave tax exemption for 20 years for automobiles and 10 years for home appliances and light engineering -- measures BCI think will boost local industries in the tough period of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The BCI applauded the government for the timely budget, in which the corporate tax has been reduced by 2.5 percentage points and advance income tax (AIT) by 1 percentage point on import of raw materials, which they said would also help the manufacturing industry.

They requested the government to continue the corporate tax reduction measure in the next three budgets also.

They even proposed that the AIT be abolished completely so that the industries could flourish further.

The BCI was unhappy as the government did not pay heed to its proposal to reduce the tax on capital machinery import.

The tax rate in the budget has been fixed at 37.5 per cent on the capital machinery import.

The BCI demanded the tax to be reduced by 1 percentage point from the capital machineries of the industrial organisations.

They congratulated the finance minister for the tax redemption and the increase of the allocation to the health sector after the government set aside Tk 10,000 crore for the health sector in a bid to address the coronavirus properly.