The government is going to fix all value added tax (VAT) at a flat rate of 15 per cent by 2015, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said Tuesday.
"Our aim is to fix all VAT rates at 15 per cent flat rate by 2015. VAT will remain in place and it would expand further," Muhith said when representatives of private television owners' association called on him at his office.
The minister said advance income tax (AIT) is a good device for tax regime and it will also continue simultaneously.
Mr Muhith suggested merger of insurance companies, bank and television channels to for better performance.
Association of Television Channel Owners (ATCO) president Mosaddek Ali Falu, Secretary Shykh Seraj, Member A. K. Azad, Mozammel Babu, Anjan Chowdhury, Golam Doshtogir Gazi and Salahuddin Ahmed attended the meeting.
The television channel owners placed a set of proposals before the minister which included imposition of both financial and legal restriction on broadcasting Indian television channel programmes in Bangladesh, indexing local channels by cable operators on priority basis and allowing use of earth station jointly.
Mosaddek Ali Falu said that local advertisement providers are now shifting their publicity expenditure to Indian channels because some of those have become popular due to faulty broadcasting policies pursued by the government.
"The government should impose some restrictions on broadcasting by Indian channels in Bangladesh because India does not allow a single Bangladeshi channel in Indian territory," Mr Falu said.
He said cable operators also show Indian channels with utmost importance instead of Bangladeshi channels for which more people see Indian channels. Shykh Seraj complained that tax officials are harassing TV channel owners as tax offices are demanding all commercial advertisements aired since their inception at compact disk format.
"This is almost impossible because many commercials are not preserved by the TV channels." Shykh Seraj demanded some tax exemption because the private channels aired different government advertisements and BTV bulletins free of cost
Mozammel Babu said the government is deprived of about Tk 1.0 billion because of lack of digitalization of TV channels distribution system.
"Private cable operators do not pay VAT to the government though they realize it from customers due to lack of digitalization," Babu said.
They demanded an immediate coordination meeting to resolve these problems.
UNB adds: About the complaint against VAT, the finance minister said that it should be reciprocal. He, however, said that there might be some compulsion on them by the NBR as they should not be completely independent to this end.
Terming the recommendations of the ATCO a bit complicated, he suggested them of sharing their proposals with the concerned authorities and said he would write notes to all concerned ministries and stakeholders to hold discussion over their issues.
In response to Mozammel Haque Babu of Channel 71's suggestion of imposing tax on the operation of foreign channels in Bangladesh to protect the interest of local satellite channels, Muhith said, "It's a good thing."
About the broadcast policy, he said the draft policy is now at his ministry and it would also go up to the Cabinet.
Speaking on the occasion, Shykh Seraj of channel i said currently, 24 local satellite channels are in operation in the country while 13 new channels have also been given licences.
He also informed the finance minister that each of the TV channels are incurring loss of around Tk 200000 to Tk 300000 everyday due to airing the news of state-run BTV, which is also affecting their revenue earnings.
Shyke Seraj also said that the satellite channel owners also have to provide Tk 2.2 million per month for renting satellite for uplinking their connections and productions. He said that the Indian TV channels are running successfully in the country in the first five channels of the local cable operators, whereas the Bangladeshi channels are not being allowed in India.
Meanwhile, at one stage of the meeting, Muhith got annoyed with the allegation of harassment by the NBR raised by SA TV managing director Salahuddin Ahmed.
