The National Board of Revenue is going to announce the budget for the fiscal year 2022-2023 next month. The effects of the global epidemic have created an unusual, extraordinary, volatile, uncertain, dangerous and risky situation in almost every field of life, health and livelihood and economic activity worldwide, which is still ongoing. In this situation, everyone is hopeful that the budget for FY 2022-23 will be formulated and announced with the objective of accelerating livelihood and economic activities by adopting strategies to protect lives i.e. minimize health risks.
Syed Almas Kabir, President of Bangladesh-Malaysia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BMCCI) and former President of BASIS. , Emphasizing on export diversification and promotion of local industrialization and ensuring investment friendly environment in achieving the targets of economic growth.
He said Bangladesh and the world economy are now in full swing after the last two years due to the constraints caused by the Covid pandemic. Now is the time for Bangladesh in terms of domestic demand, employment and economic recovery. At the same time, due to external global developments, potential instability in the energy market in the European economy and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, our local economies as well as the world are facing high inflationary pressures, logistical and supply chain disruptions. The forthcoming budget must reflect the transition from such an adverse situation.
Referring to the current situation in Sri Lanka, he said the two economies are different, and the direction of export and development is different. Our external debt is less which is about 16% of our GDP. The gap between our exports and imports remittances versus our imports and external remittances such as debt repayment is narrowing sharply. We have spent about 40,000 crore rupees for vaccines. Therefore, according to Mr. Almas Kabir, the forthcoming budget is very important for Bangladesh to overcome all these limitations.
Almas Kabir said that the number of taxpayers in our country is very inadequate. The number of taxpayers should be increased without increasing the tax rate. As the tax net increases, there will be no need to set higher tax rates. At the same time, there is a need to launch a massive campaign to make online income tax return filing system more popular.
