Proposed budget for FY22 investment & business friendly: FBCCI

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DHAKA, June 5, 2021 (BSS) – Terming the proposed national budget for FY22 as investment and business friendly, the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) today said that this budged has turned out to be a business and investment friendly one considering the demand of the countrymen under the present circumstances.

The country’s apex trade body, however, opined that there are certain challenges to implement this budget.

Newly elected President of FBCCI Md Jashim Uddin said this while addressing a post-budget press conference at the FBBCI building in the capital today.

MCCI President Nihad Kabir, DCCI President Rizwan Rahman and FBCCI senior Vice President Mostafa Azad Chowdhury Babu were present, among others, on the occasion.

Jashim said this budget has tried to further strengthen the economic structure of the country considering the demand of the countrymen under the present circumstances.

“This budget has highlighted the target of various infrastructural development like in power, energy and communication sector which will expedite the investment, industrialization and employment generation process further,” he said.

The FBCCI President highlighted some of the salient features of the budget like reducing the corporate tax rate for increasing Investment and flourish of the local industries side by side giving tax exemptions till 2024 the income from cloud service, system integration, e-learning, e-book publication, mobile application, development service and IT freelance services.

Besides, he mentioned that to promote the “Made in Bangladesh” brand, tax exemptions have been given to the automobile three wheeler and four wheeler manufacturing companies, household appliances, and agriculture machineries manufacturing industries. “This will help flourish local industries and simplification of trade,”

The FBCCI President also termed the initiative to reduce duty on microbus as good to label it as public transport, making the tax-free turnover to Taka 70 lakh for the female entrepreneurs, and duty exemptions on the import of machineries for the SME sector.

He, however, urged the government to give special attention to the CMSMEs to overcome their losses from the pandemic.

Jashim said it was much needed to increase the size of the budget adding that implementing such huge budget would be a challenge. “We’ll have to increase our budget Implementation capacity. I’ll also urge the government to withdraw the provision of advance income tax in the budget,”

He said that the FBCCI had earlier demanded of the government to fully withdraw the 0.5 percent advance income tax and 0.4 percent advance VAT from the budget.

“But, the imposition of advance income tax and advance VAT in the proposed budget will make tough the operations of trade and commerce and increase the business operations cost manifold,” added Jashim.

The FBCCI President also demanded to withdraw 15 percent tax on the income of private educational institutions side by side reducing the tax rate at 0.25 percent on the income of over Taka 3 crore.