The National Board of Revenue (NBR) Chairman Md Ghulam Hussain has said achieving the tax revenue target worth Tk149,000, crore with a 22% growth set for the fiscal year 2014-15 will be a challenging job.
The NBR has to fulfill the revenue collection through establishing a bridge by offering more benefits for the businesses to collect more revenue from them, NBR chief told a pre-budget meeting held on Tuesday at the NBR headquarters in the capital.
“We have to set a five-year long revenue collection plan for the government. This year, we have to collect Tk149,000 crore, which will be doubled to Tk300,000 crore in the concluding year of this government,” he said.
“Although the tax base was minimal earlier, we have to push it up to a now height and also have to work hard together to achieve the target. As we are dreaming to become a mid-income country within 2021, we need to have more tax contribution as the dream will never come true without achieving the target of highest revenue collection.”
Regarding the government’s different policies, Ghulam Rahman said the government should work for encouraging businesses to invest more in the domestic market.
“As the existing policy structure encourages businesses to launder money abroad, many companies and people are siphoning money abroad. There have been so many incident of money laundering cases while few of them were traced out and most of them remain untraced,” said Hussain.
The government should encourage the businesses to invest for the development of different domestic industries, which will need policy support as well, he added.
The NBR chief urged the businessmen to raise their voices at the consultative committee meeting to be held on May 8, for pressing home their demands on investment policies and environment friendly businesses.
“We are yet to achieve one-fourth of our development goal, which should be achieved fully in the last 42 years. Bangladesh is even still lagging behind Myanmar in terms of achieving economic growth.”
The government has been providing many facilities for the betterment of the readymade garments sector as it has employed over 40lakh people and over 43 other sectors and services are directly or indirectly depends on the garments businesses, he said.
“I have discussed with the Prime Minister and finance minister as both of them had earlier asked me to think about some dynamic and productive plans for earning more revenues,” he said.
Coming down heavily on traditional education, he urged the people not to stick to the existing traditional education system. Rather he suggested for choosing technical education, which will be ultimately helpful for them to get a support in getting a job abroad.
