Print media owners yesterday urged the government for withdrawal of all duty and VAT on newsprint import to facilitate the industry to sustain the rising operating costs.

The industry operators said they have to pay a total of 20.75 percent tax, including 5 percent duty and 15 percent VAT to import the raw material from abroad because of the low quality of the locally-produced newsprint.

“Local print media is not in a good state. So, waiver from import duty and VAT will be a great help for the industry,” said Matiur Rahman, president of Newspaper Owners' Association of Bangladesh (Noab).

Noab made the appeal at a pre-budget meeting with the senior officials of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) at the NBR headquarters.

Matiur cited example of import duty for newsprint for print media in the neighbouring countries and said print media in India does not require any duty to import newsprint.

“Newspapers in India have secured a good position in the world. The biggest English daily in the world is in India now. The country has also big paper mills. Even after that, the print media there gets zero duty import benefit,” he said.

Noab said six to seven local paper mills produce newsprint which can be used in the newspaper industry, but the quality of the newsprint is poor.

Some eight to nine copies of a 24-page newspaper can be printed on a kilogram of imported newsprint whereas only six-seven copies can be printed on a kilogram of locally-produced newsprint, it said.

As a result, the cost of production increases, said Matiur, also editor of the Prothom Alo, the largest circulated Bangla daily.

Noab said the government declared newspaper as an industry so it should get treatment like other industrial sectors.

As an industry, the government should consider newsprint as the raw material for the newspaper industry. So, there should not be any VAT on import of newsprint, said Noab Vice-President AK Azad.

Azad, also the publisher of Bangla daily Shamokal, said the newspaper industry will flourish if government provides zero duty privilege.

He said it costs Tk 14-15 to publish a copy of newspaper and 40 percent of the price of a paper goes to the hawkers as commission, he said.

“The newspaper industry is struggling to sustain. It is not a profitable industry. It is a service-oriented industry."

Dewan Hanif Mahmud, editor of Bonik Barta, the Bangla-language business daily, said print media's revenue is mainly based on advertisement which is driven by the private sector.

However, the flow of ads is slow from the private sector while there has also not been a notable rise in government ads. As a result, there has been an impact on the revenue of the print media, he said.

NBR Chairman Nojibur Rahman said the NBR would be mindful about the demands and problems of the print media during the preparation of the budget proposal for fiscal year 2016-17.

AHM Moazzem Hossain, editor of the Financial Express and an executive committee member of Noab, said the pink newsprint is a brand for his newspaper and many local newspapers are using the pink newsprint for printing economic and business news. 

There is no local production of the pink newsprint, he said.

He said duty on newsprint import for print media should be waived rather than giving any discriminatory treatment.

M Shamsur Rahman, editor of English daily the Independent, and Tasmima Hossain, acting editor of the Bangla daily Ittefaq, among others, were present in the meeting.