Budget to increase tax burden on people: BNP

Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Friday said that the countrymen would not accept the proposed impractically ambitious budget for 2019-20 fiscal year as it would increase the burden of taxes on the general people.

In an official reaction, BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, at a press briefing at the political office of the party chairperson at the capital’s Gulshan, also termed the government as ‘the lone unelected government in South Asia’ and said that it had no moral right to announce any budget.

‘The proposed budget goes against the people. An increased burden of taxes has been heaped on the shoulders of the people. It will only increase discrimination between the poor and the rich,’ he said.

‘There was nothing in the proposed budget for easing the sufferings of the farmers. The budget was formulated without addressing the main problems of the common people. It would provide benefit for the government ministers, bureaucrats and the government backed businessmen,’ he said.

‘As the government is unelected, the country lacks democracy and good governance. As a result macro economy was destroyed,’ he claimed, adding that the budged kept the provision of whitening black money to provide benefits to the corrupt.

Terming the budget ambitious, he said that the budget projected huge expenditure, but the government had lost the ability to earn.

He said that National Board of Revenue’s collection target of Tk 2.96 lakh crore was revised to Tk 2.80 lakh crore but, in the past nine months, NBR collected Tk 1.53 lakh crore and they would have to collect Tk 1.27 lakh in the last quarter, which is an almost impossible target, as per previous experience.

He said that the Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act 2012 would be implemented from July 1 and, if the businessmen demanded tax rebate under the new law, the government would have to pay this additional money from its own exchequer.

The budget has no specific direction how the government would pay the rebate amount to the businessmen though the government may have to spend Tk 30,000 to Tk 40,000 crore in a year for this, he said.

‘If the government fails to pay the rebate amount to the businessmen it would actually be turned into excise duty. In that case, further taxes would be imposed and the commodity prices may increase up to 38 per cent,’ he said.

He said a large amount was needed to pay the loans back along with the interests as the loan amount is only increasing while there was no direction in the proposed budget about how to clear the loans when it became incredibly huge. ‘The responsibility would fall on our future generation,’ he added.

One of the major reasons of increasing amount loan was connected to the creation of more posts than necessary in government jobs and increased salaries and the payment of other benefits through massive promotion, he alleged.

‘Allocation of 20.5 per cent of the revenue expenditure for salary and allowance of government employees cannot be called logical,’ he argued.

He said that the budget expected a GDP growth of 8.2 per cent while the current fiscal year’s targeted growth of 8.13 per cent was questionable as the GDP growth did not match any index of macro economy as people’s real income had decreased, people’s per head kilocalorie consumption had decreased and unemployment had increased.

He said that by increasing project costs many times higher than the original ones through corruption and the government would extract the money from people’s pocket through taxes and VAT which would create undue pressure on people.

Fakhrul said that the existing development system was contributing to rising income discrimination and benefiting some ruling party beneficiaries.

‘A new rich class has emerged. The interests of the common people and the poor class are ignored in the parliament. The interests of the rich and the business community are being preserved there,’ he said.

He alleged that the country’s economy had been confined to a select few who had been planning and executing the budget, controlling the economy and running the government.

The rich would become richer and the poor would become poorer if the budget was implemented, he said, adding that the middle and lower middle class people would suffer the most if the budget was implemented as a huge load of VAT had been imposed on them.

BNP standing committee members BNP Standing Committee Member Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain, Abdul Moyeen Khan, Moudud Ahmed,   Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, Mirza Abbas and Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury also spoke.

Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Thursday placed the proposed budget outlay of Tk 5,23,190 crore for financial year 2019-20 with about 27.78 per cent in deficit in the parliament relaxing legalisation of undisclosed money, raising surcharge-free asset limit and keeping tax-free income limit unchanged.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net