The National Board of Revenue has decided to provide customs duty waiver on import of different machinery and other equipments for newly-established international standard luxury hotels in a bid to promote the hospitality industry and tourism sector in the country.
The NBR in a board meeting held last week made the decision, officials said.
Entrepreneurs will have to collect grade certificate from the tourism ministry which will certify the hotels considering the international standards, they said.
According to the NBR decision, newly-constructed luxury hotels will enjoy full waiver from paying value-added tax and supplementary duty and partial exemption from paying customs duty on import of those machinery and equipments.
The hotels will have to pay only 5 per cent customs duty, the officials said.
Importers will enjoy such waiver once on import of equipments for fire detection and protection, health club, kitchen and cooking, building security system, machinery for electric sub-station and pre-fabricated building structures.
For getting the facility, entrepreneurs will have to import the equipments during hotel construction period and before commercial inception of the hotels, the officials said.
The entrepreneurs will have to apply to the NBR along with registration of Board of Investment, certificate from the tourism ministry on the international standards of the hotels and copy of agreement with international chain hotel, if the proposed hotel is a franchisee of chain hotel and approved lay-out of the hotel, they said.
The revenue board made the decision of providing duty exemption as it was getting applications from some entrepreneurs for duty benefits.
The NBR has already received applications from Shena Hotel Development Ltd, Sea Pearl Beach Resorts and Spa Ltd, La Rose Centre, Premier Hotel Management Ltd and Unique Hotel and Resorts Ltd.
These companies are either constructing upper-graded hotels or signed agreement for construction of standard hotels in the country with some international chain hotel companies like Marriott, Hilton, Westin and Radisson.
The NBR officials said that many organisations were now showing interest to establish upper-graded hotels in Bangladesh considering its business and tourism prospects.
In this context, the NBR decided to provide the international standard luxury hotels with such tax benefits.
In 2012, the NBR, however, rejected an application of Sea Pearl Beach Resort and Spa Limited seeking such exemption though it had granted such exemption to few hotels like Westin Hotel and Hotel Sarina in Dhaka, Hotel Seagull in Cox’s Bazar and Bashundhara City Shopping Mall.
-With New Age input
