Tk 450 crore collected from digital land tax

Since the start of the round-the-clock digital land tax payment service in September 2021, the Ministry of Land has contributed Tk 450 crore to the national exchequer.

Land Secretary Md Mustafizur Rahman revealed the information while speaking as the keynote speaker at a dialogue on land management and citizen rights in the capital on Thursday.

The dialogue was organised by Citizen’s Platform in partnership with Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF) and other partner organisations.

The secretary said collecting revenue digitally from e-mutation and Digital Land Records, the ministry has deposited Tk 450 crore to the central bank as digital land tax. To make it happen, some 40 million holdings data has been digitised.

He said, “At present, some 55 million land ownership information and 90,000 mouza maps are available online. To digitalise the whole process, we are digitising some 1,38,000 mouza maps across the country through the Land Zoning Project.”

The land secretary mentioned that Tk 180 crore has been collected during the first five months of making online payments for the e-mutation mandatory from October last year.

He said till now some 8.5m e-mutations have been disposed of and some two lakh online mutations are completed every month.

Meanwhile, the ministry collected Tk 15 crore providing Digital Land Records, he informed.

“All the activities are to lessen people’s sufferings. We are now preparing to conduct the Bangladesh Digital Survey which will be the last survey in Bangladesh,” the land secretary said.

“Previous records had little scope of updating, changing, and correcting data; but with the e-mutation of the map, khatian will be updated accordingly,” he explained.

“There are controversies over the disbursement of compensation money for the acquired land. To make the disbursement process smooth and transparent, a software is being developed by the iBAS under the finance ministry. Once it is installed one can get the compensation money staying at home,” he hoped.

In this regard, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with mobile financial service providers Upay, Nagad, and Bkash, and banking services provider United Commercial Bank on May 24, 2021.

All the payments of land-related fees would be made mandatory to pay online from the next Pahela Baishakh, the land secretary announced.

Speaking as the chief guest at the dialogue, Land Minister Saifuzzaman Chowdhury said that the purpose of setting up a system to pay all the fees online is to bring land services to the doorsteps of the people and decrease people’s sufferings.

“Many people are not accustomed to the internet and to provide services with possible lower cost, we have started preliminary works to appoint authorised dealers in every union. Unemployed youths would get jobs as freelancers here,” he added.

CPD Distinguished Fellow Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, a macro-economist and public policy analyst, moderated the dialogue addressed by TIB Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman, the executive director of MJF, officials from different NGOs, and several government officers.