Though the opening of letters of credit (LCs) dropped and taka depreciated against the US dollar, the country’s overall import and export revenue collection has exceeded its target in the first two months of the current fiscal year.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has collected Tk 16,192 crore, up by around 9 per cent year-on-year, against its target of Tk 16,177 crore, according to the NBR’s latest data.
The Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data showed that Bangladesh’s exports grew by 15.26 per cent in July and 3.8 per cent in August of FY24 compared to 14.70 per cent in July and 36.18 per cent in August last FY.
As the government is trying to cut imports to save USD, payments in July declined by 14.84 per cent to $4.99 billion. Although the figure is yet to be released, the opening of LCs dropped by 23 per cent to $4.96 billion year-on-year in the month of August.
Besides, the revenue board collected Tk 17,940 crore in VAT during the July-August period, up by 19.34 per cent compared to the same months in the previous fiscal year.
Due to high inflation, VAT department has witnessed such growth despite the economic headwinds, insiders say.
According to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), Bangladesh faced high inflationary pressure in FY11. After that inflation gradually declined to 6.15 per cent in FY22, but it again rose to 9.02 per cent in FY23.
In July-August of FY24, inflation in the country was 9.69 per cent and 9.92 per cent respectively which were higher than that of India and Sri Lanka. Food inflation also increased to 12.5 per cent in August this year, the highest in a decade.
Even the country’s income and travel tax has risen during the July-August period. The NBR collected Tk 12,100 crore in income and travel tax, up by 16.39 per cent year-on-year.
Fiscal measures, including introducing tax increases in land registration, travel tax, tobacco tax, environmental surcharge on multiple cars, and incorporating a provision for tax return preparers to widen the tax net in the budget for FY24 as well as new income tax act helped increase the revenue collection from this sector, said income tax wing officials.
The NBR overall collected Tk 46,233 crore of revenue during the July-August period of FY24, up by around 15 per cent year-on-year.
However, the shortfall in revenue collection increased to Tk 4,087 crore as the actual target was Tk 50,321 crore for the first two months of the current fiscal year.
The government has set a Tk 430,000 crore target for FY24--Tk 1,59,100 crore from VAT, Tk 1,54,800 crore from income and travel tax and Tk 1,16,100 crore from import and export duties.
