The National Board of Revenue is going to ask the commerce ministry for reducing the duration of the month-long Dhaka International Trade Fair to 10 days from next year in order to uphold the spirit of the fair and ensure discipline, officials of the NBR said.
The month-long DITF does not fulfill the purposes, mainly expansion of export business, rather it increases the volume of import into the country, they said.
The revenue board, in a recent meeting on preparation of a guideline relating to valuation of imported products and collecting customs duties, value-added tax and other taxes for the participants in the 19th DITF, took the decision considering the actual effect of the fair.
‘One of the major purposes of the fair is to expand export businesses of the country through exhibiting local goods to the international buyers and provide opportunity to the international exporters to display their products to local importers, not sales,’ a senior NBR official told New Age on Wednesday.
But the month-long DITF has turned into a market place for selling local and international goods instead of displaying the goods and that mars the spirit of the fair, he said.
The fair also receives little international visitors along with very low export orders from overseas buyers, he added.
On the other hand, local participants along with international participants import goods in huge quantities to sell at the fair venue, officials said.
Many importers evade customs duties and taxes through under-invoicing during the import process, they said.
A huge amount of foreign currencies outflow through the foreign participants during the fair, they pointed out.
‘All the characteristics of the fair prove that the month-long fair cannot match with its spirit,’ another official said.
Considering all the issues, the NBR decided to request the commerce ministry to shorten the duration of the fair in line with the international practices, he said.
He said that NBR’s decision regarding this issue is final and the commerce ministry will only implement the request.
In Europe and USA, such kind of fairs are held only for 3-5 days while in Asia the duration is 8-10 days, he added.
According to the commerce ministry, DITF in 2013 received export orders worth Tk 157 crore.
-With New Age input
