Local refiners of unusable lubricants have sought waiver of VAT deduction at source (VDS) on purchase of burnt oil (raw material) to help survival of the re-fining lubricant units.
Bangladesh Re-finery Lubricants Owners' Association (BRLOA) has requested the National Board Revenue (NBR) to take necessary steps in this regard, sources said.
Generally, lubricant oil is used in vehicles, industries, aviation industry etc. and after a certain period of time, the lubricants become unusable and turn into fossil.
It is converted into world's top polluting item and is also very harmful to the environment and costly to manage.
The waste lubricants or burnt oil cannot be disposed of in water or soil.
In this situation, to protect balance of the environment, in different countries of the world, these wastes are re-processed (re-refined) to produce quality base oil which is recognized by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA, USA).
The sector owners collect burnt oil or unusable lubricant (raw material). They process its re-refining plants locally.
The owners claimed that they are making a good contribution socially and environmentally by refining the item reducing the country's dependence on import through local production.
They also believe that it is continuously contributing to the economic development of the country in terms of meeting the necessary needs.
They also claimed to set up a backward linkage industry if it gets government support.
The country imports around 200,000 tonnes of lubricant oil/base oil from several countries annually which involves a huge amount of foreign currencies.
After a period of time, this imported lube oil turns into polluted waste due to consumption.
Earlier, the government had waivers to encourage the supply of plastic waste, waste, locally collected scrap/ scrap from steel mills etc by deduction of tax at source.
But the lubricant refining sector has not been considered under this facility which was deserved on the basis of justification for lubricant re-refineries.
