Staff Correspondent
Finance Minister AMA Muhith yesterday said as per their election pledges the ministers and lawmakers of Awami League (AL) will make public their wealth statements next month.
Wrapping up his first meeting with officials of National Board of Revenue (NBR), Muhith told reporters, “Of course it will be announced publicly. I consider this month a month of training for us. There are some emergency matters which will keep us busy. These include giving subsidy to fertiliser, lowering the price of diesel, etc.”
Muhit said the ministers, AL lawmakers and their family members will make public their wealth statements every year and comply with the AL’s election manifesto.
Asked whether the drive the caretaker government had launched against tax dodgers would continue, he said, “The drive and the cases filed against tax dodgers during the caretaker regime will continue during the rule of this government. No guilty person will be spared even if he or she is a leader of Awami League. We are not a government of the party; we are government of the people.”
He said, “In our country a number of very wealthy dragons have been created. They have huge amount of money but they do not pay taxes. They need to be punished.”
The finance minister said there are two main challenges to collecting revenue. The global financial crisis is starting to have its impact on revenue collection and overcoming this is a challenge. Another problem is that they have assumed power with a large agenda. “We will have to mobilise resources for implementing those. We have sought cooperation of the revenue officials in this regard.”
A big part of our tax comes from import tax and VAT (value added tax). Already revenue collection has dropped due to fall in prices of import goods.
This year the target revenue collection growth is more than 20 percent but the growth was 15.33 percent in the first five months of the current fiscal year. Of this, the growth of revenue collection from import duty sector is only 6.79 percent.
Asked why diesel price was lowered by only Tk 2 per litre, the finance minister said due to selling of diesel at low prices in the past, Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation has now a debt of Tk 15,000 crore. To reduce the debt they have not gone for larger price cut, he added.
Courtesy: thedailystar.net
