The National Board of Revenue has lowered tariff value of machine-made bricks by more than 33 per cent in a bid to encourage production of environment friendly bricks in the country, officials of the revenue board said. They said that the revenue board took the decision to discourage production of bricks in traditional brick kilns which pollute the environment and reduce agricultural lands and forest resources of the country.
Setting up environment-friendly and energy efficient automatic brick kilns in the country would be encouraged due to reduction of tariff value of machine-made bricks as it would reduce the cost of production, they said.
The NBR on January 18 issued a statutory regulatory order in this connection lowering tariff value of machine-made bricks for both grade one and grade two.
Value-added tax is imposed based on the tariff value of any product. So the amount of VAT would also be lowered because of reduction of tariff value of machine-made bricks.
According to NBR SRO, the tariff value of machine-made grade one bricks has been lowered to Tk 3,456 per thousand from Tk 5,184 per thousand.
For grade two bricks, the tariff value will be Tk 2,484 per thousand which was Tk 3,726.
Officials of the NBR said that traditional brick fields generate a large amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses as they burn thousands of tonnes of coal and firewood which pollute air and pose threat to public health.
Every year, hundreds of traditional brick fields are set up in villages across the country on agricultural and forest lands which caused shrinking of arable lands and destruction of forests.
‘Bangladesh needs to protect its environment as well as agricultural lands to ensure public health and food security in the country,’ said an official of the NBR.
On the other hand, automatic brick kilns emit very little carbon dioxide and other environment polluting gasses compared with that of traditional brick fields.
According to different sources, there are around 5,000 traditional brick kilns in the country.
The government has already banned setting up of new traditional brick fields while the existing ones would have to be converted with eco-friendly technology by June 2014.
-With New Age input
