The ministry of telecommunication has recommended reduction in SIM tax in the upcoming fiscal budget to boost mass users’ penetration, said officials.
They said the ministry already sent a proposal to trim the value added-tax at Tk 200 from the existing Tk 600 to relieve the small operators from the extra economic burden so they could concentrate on expansion of operations and network offering quality services.
The telecom regulator — Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission — also advocated lowering the SIM tax in the new fiscal as reduced SIM tax would pave the way for more revenue through increasing mass users penetration.
The long standing issue rose again at a meeting in the ministry recently and finally the telecom ministry sent a recommendation to the finance division for reducing the SIM tax, the officials added.
They said the ministry had taken the initiative considering the aspect of small operators as the big operators could afford the tax easily, but the small ones were facing trouble paying the tax that was also barring their subscriber penetration.
Talking to the news agency, telecom secretary Abubakar Siddique said they had had a meeting recently related to the SIM tax issue.
At present, Tk 600 has to be paid as VAT against the selling of every new SIM card and the operators are paying the tax to offer new connection to subscriber with low price.
The mobile phone operators in the country has to afford huge amount of money due to the high taxation on SIM card that is barring further development of the telecommunication sector, said the operators.
Currently, there are six cellular phone operators — Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi, Airtel, Citycel and state-owned Teletalk — in the country which have collectively a total of 10 crore subscribers.
-With New Age input
