Govt moves to slap duty on refined sugar import

Syful Islam The government is going to slap duty on refined sugar import in a bid to 'save' the local refineries, officials said Monday. Commerce Secretary M Ghulam Hossain Sunday sent a demo officio letter to Chairman of National Board of Revenue (NBR) Nasir Uddin Ahmed to impose duty on refined sugar import as the local industry fails to compete with the importers, they said. "The local refineries fail to compete with the importers since their (local) production cost is much higher. We have requested the NBR to impose logical duty on refined sugar import," a senior official of the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) told the FE. Presently no duty or value added tax (VAT) is applicable for refined or raw sugar import and thus the local refiners face 'uneven' competition, he said.Sources said during the July-September period of this fiscal some 106,000 tonnes of refined sugar was imported against the total demand of some 300,000 tonnes. Due to the low import cost of refined sugar the importers could supply sugar in the market at a lower cost than that of the refiners. Many of the refiners have alleged to the MoC officials that their distributors are not collecting sugar as they get the same from the refiners at a lower cost.