Govt slaps 10pc duty on rice import

The government has slapped 10 per cent duty on import of rice to ensure fair price for local farmers, said finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith on Sunday.Muhith’s announcement came at a pre-budget meeting with different parliamentary standing committee chairmen at the National Economic Council Auditorium in Dhaka.‘The import duty was imposed to protect local farmers from fall of prices of rice because of excessive import of the item,’ he said.
Officials of the National Board of Revenue said a draft statutory regulatory order was sent to the law ministry for vetting. The SRO will be issued after completion of the law ministry’s vetting, they said.
Taking the advantage of zero duty on import of the product, traders have been importing the item in huge quantity as the rice price is lower in the Indian market compared with Bangladesh, said officials of the food ministry.
Agricultural minister Matia Chowdhury at a programme on Saturday night said that the government had decided to slap import duty on rice citing Bangladesh is self-sufficient in food and there is no need to import rice.
‘India authorities clear their godown in every two years; so they have to sell all rice from the godown at a very low price. Some people take the opportunity to import rice at a very low price,’ she said.
‘But we are considering the situation very seriously and made the decision to impose 10 per cent import tax,’ the minister added.
According to the food ministry data, private traders imported 13.13 lakh tonnes of rice between July 1, 2014 and May 6, 2015 — the highest quantity since the financial year 2010-11.
The quantity of rice import is around four times higher than the total rice import in the last fiscal year when 3.75 lakh tonnes were imported.
Earlier on April 12, the food ministry had requested the revenue board for an imposition of import duty on rice to ensure fair price for domestic growers.
In its opinion, the food ministry had said that the price of rice in domestic market was on falling trend in recent days due to huge import and feared that farmers would not get fair price for rice in coming boro purchase season to be started from May 1, if large-scale import of rice continued.

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