Bangladesh Pustak Prokashok O Bikreta Samity, an association of book publishers and sellers, on Tuesday urged the government to withdraw duty on the import of papers, protesting an 'unusual' price hike of the item.
The association came up with the demand at a press conference held at the National Press Club in Dhaka.
Reading out a written statement, the association’s President Arif Hossain Choton said if the duty on paper import could not be minimised in the context of growing paper demand, an unstable situation will emerge soon in the country’s paper market.
He said if papers cannot be imported with soft duty or duty-free, there will be a crisis of papers ahead of the textbook distribution programme that the government takes every new year and the Amar Ekushey Book Fair.
A five-point demand was put forward at the press conference. The demands included declaring paper import as duty-free, applying used papers in recycling work, making the stored papers available in the market and giving incentives or subsidies to importing papers.
