Muhith says many share market investors are ‘touts’
Bangladesh is risking of re-inclusion in the grey list by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force because of monitoring lapse by the share market operators to check shady transactions and money laundering. Bank and financial institution secretary M Aslam Alam on Thursday expressed the concern during a post-budget meeting between the finance minister, AMA Muhith, and the share market operators at the secretariat.
He said they worked hard for five years to bring the country out of the grey list in last February.
The Financial Action Task Force has advised that the share market operators would look into the suspected transactions and know the detailed about clients, he said.
The international organisation would not hesitate to put the country back into the grey lists because of monitoring lapses, he said adding that the Dhaka Stock Exchange and the Chittagong Stock Exchange should be proactive.
Muhith after the meeting told reporters that many of the country’s share market investors were ‘touts’.
‘Lots of investors…they are not investors. They are fatkabaz [touts],’ he said.
Asked why the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission should not be held responsible for the share market volatility, Muhith said that the touts, not the BSEC, should be held responsible.
The minister also held responsible the touts for the volatility in the market.
The boards of directors of Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges placed before Muhith some proposals including scrapping of capital gain tax proposed in the budget for the financial year 2014-2015.
Muhith advised the DSE and CSE boards to sit with revenue board officials before placing their demands on latest budgetary proposals.
Muhith in the budget proposed three to five per cent tax on gain realised by any individual investors.
He proposed that corporate tax would be reduced to 35 per cent from the existing 37.50 per cent for non-listed companies, while corporate tax for the listed companies would remain unchanged at 27.50 per cent.
Three per cent tax will be slapped on the individuals with more than Tk 10 lakh capital gain in a year, while the gain tax will be 5 per cent if an individual earns more than Tk 20 lakh a year.
Share market operators said proposed gain tax was not a bad idea, but the time was not appropriate.
They said the government should have reduced tax burden from the capital market to revive it and to stimulate investors as the market had been suffering since the market crash in 2010-2011.
Muhith said the share market was now stable.
-With New Age input
