¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·

National Board of Revenue chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan said on Monday that the government had taken a vow not to allow tax exemption in the coming days unless it was inevitably necessary for the interest of the country.  

‘We are going out from the tax exemption culture, we have scrapped existing tax exemptions. We will not give any tax exemption afresh and we have taken a vow. We have prepared a policy, we will not give any tax exemption,’ he said. 

The NBR chairman said this while addressing a pre-budget meeting at the NBR conference room at the revenue building in the city’s Agargaon Area on the day.

Representatives from different financial institutions like banks, insurance, leasing and merchant banks, the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission, the Dhaka Stock Exchange, the Chittagong Stock Exchange and the DSE Brokers’ Association joined the pre-budget meeting to place their budget proposals.

Talking about the present condition of the capital market of Bangladesh, Md Abdur Rahman Khan said that the basic problem was the lack of good governance in the capital market.

He mentioned that no country in the world could be developed without developing the capital market. 

‘Bangladesh will not be able to do that since we have ruined this place through various means, still we are depending on the banking sector for the source of money for industrialisation,’ he said.

In this connection, he blamed the regulators for the lack of confidence of the investors in the capital market. 

He said that business people used to take loans from the banks for setting up their industries, but they are not interested to go to the capital market to raise funds. 

‘Why they are not coming to the capital market, I don’t know that,’ he wondered. 

He said that taking money from the banking sector as loan while raising fund from the capital market was ‘absolutely free money’. 

On the other hand, he said that although many were going to the capital market for fund raising for industrialisation, but after some time it was revealed that there was no industry being set up with that money.

‘That means the regulators did not perform their duties properly, whatever the tax benefits we give to the capital market, it will not bring any positive result unless the confidence of the investors returned to this capital market,’ he said.