A number of ruling Awami League lawmakers on Tuesday spoke in favour of keeping illegal money legalising provisions, taking part in a general discussion on the proposed budget for the 2024–25 financial year in Jatiya Sangsad.
Among them, a lawmaker also demanded an opportunity to legalise money by investing in the stock market.
Finance minister Abul Hasan Mahmud Ali placed the proposed budget for the next financial year in Jatiya Sangsad on Thursday.
The general discussion on the budget started on Tuesday.
AL lawmaker Nur Mohammad mentioned past opportunities for ‘whiten black money’ and said that the government could not discriminate against honest taxpayers even if it gave special benefits to tax evaders.
Fifteen per cent tax for legalising money is discriminatory and unethical, he said.
Referring to the stock market hitting rock bottom in the past two months, Nur Mohammad urged the finance minister to create a provision for whitening black money through investment in the stock market.
He demanded a review of the proposal of imposing a 25 per cent duty tax on lawmakers to import cars, saying that the duty can be waived for new parliamentarians.
‘We are new members of Parliament. You can do it in the case of those who have become parliamentarians in the past; reconsider in our case (elected for the first time),’ he said.
Nur Mohammad also spoke about the recent corruption allegations against powerful people.
‘Corruption is now the most uttered. Names of such persons are coming up in the media, which makes us [the Awami League] embarrassed. There has been so much corruption in the big positions that it can never be ended by saying. Some people in Bangladesh are getting rich fast,’ he saidÂ
AL lawmaker Abu Zahir said that many people were criticising this year’s budget for providing the opportunity to turn ‘black money into white’.
‘During the tenure of BNP, finance minister Saifur Rahman himself whitened black money; even then, prime minister Khaleda Zia whitened black money,’ he claimed.
He added that during the BNP and HM Ershad eras, after the announcement of the budget, along with the political parties, common people used to protest on the streets.
‘Now that doesn’t happen. Now people cheer,’ he said.
AL lawmaker Nilufar Anjum said that the opportunity to whiten black money had been kept to bring money back into the banking channel.
She welcomed the lawmakers’ proposal to levy duty on car imports and termed it a breakthrough.