The proposed national budget did not reflect the proposals, given by the BASIS for the targeted development of country's IT sector.
At the post-budget press conference, BASIS leaders made the remarks, citing that the allocation for the IT sector in the budget has increased by 16.69 percent or about Tk. 274 crore as compared to last year's revised budget.
The press conference was held at BASIS Auditorium, Karwanbazar in the capital on Saturday.
Addressing the press conference, BASIS Vice-President (Administration) Abu Daud Khan said there was no clear indication as to which projects or sectors the money would be spent on and how it would benefit the IT industry and its entrepreneurs.
At the same time, to encourage start-up entrepreneurs, the budget is exempting start-up entrepreneurs from all types of reporting obligations except filing income tax returns. We applaud the timely steps taken by the government.
Fahim Ahmed, Vice President (Finance), BASIS and AKM Ahmedul Islam Babu, Director, BASIS were present at the press conference. Speakers at the press conference said that the budget of the IT sector did not reflect BASIS's proposal as expected.
They said that in order to encourage foreign investment in the IT sector, we had proposed to extend the tax exemption from 2024 to 2030, but this was not taken into account in the budget.
On the other hand, local software and technology based services (ITES) are now subject to a 5% withholding value-added tax at the business level.
In addition, BASIS has proposed to allocate at least 10% of the budget for the internal development of all ministries and their affiliated agencies for the purchase of software and ITES. But we did not see any specific guidelines in this year's budget.
We know that cyber security is now a problem not only in Bangladesh but all over the world. Incidents like theft of reserves of Bangladesh Bank have taken place as a result of not providing proper security and high tariffs on software products are necessary to ensure cyber security. With this in mind, the new H.S. Code for cyber security software.
We talked about setting a tariff rate by setting a code, which we did not see reflected in this year's budget speech.
Fahim Ahmed, Vice-President (Finance), BASIS said he hoped the government would consider the issues through budget discussions.
