National Board of Revenue (NBR) would look into the repeated incidents of smuggling gold in the country as a section of the people considers Dhaka as a transit route, says Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed.
“I wonder seeing how often such huge amount of gold is being smuggled into Bangladesh without any solid reasons although most of the jewelry business points finger at higher tax on gold import,” Tofail told reporters yesterday, after a meeting at his secretariat office in the capital.
The minister said the government imposed Tk3,000 duties on import of 100 gm gold from aboard while it was only Tk150 tax on import of 100 gm gold in the last year.
He said: “Smuggling of mobile phones has been stopped now because of the lower import tax.”
Earlier, the commerce minister at a coordination council meeting said the high import tax was responsible for gold smuggling in the country and asked for inter-ministerial meeting on this matter.
“The rate of gold smuggling is so high now just because of the higher import tax,” Bangladesh Jewelry Association President Quazi Sirajul Islam told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
