Planning minister provides revenue plan for 2015-16

Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has provided details of the government’s plan to achieve the revenue target proposed in national budget. He specified the sectors, from where additional revenue is planned to be raised. Addressing a discussion on the 2015-2016 budget, the planning minister said, Tk409.42 billion more than the previous year would be needed to finance the proposed annual expenditure. To implement the budget, he said Tk110.64b will be collected as extra revenue through the digitisation of the collection system. He said Tk45b will be collected from the tobacco sector, Tk10b from the mobile phone operators, Tk4b from the service sector, and Tk16b from the apparel sector. He also said the government will settle cases and earn around Tk260b in the next fiscal year. Thus the total amount of extra collection is estimated at Tk445b. In order to achieve this target to collect the extra funds, revenue collection will have to grow by 30 per cent against an average of 18 in past five years, the minister said. If the growth of the collection remains 18pc, the collection will be around Tk260b, he said. “Besides, we have already started to reform the tax scale,” he said. According to data provided by Kamal, the collection of revenue grew 17pc in the first nine months of current 2014-2015 fiscal year. Detailing Finance Minister AMA Muhith’s plan to raise the number of income taxpayers, he said tax offices were set in 85 upazilas after setting up district-level offices, according to bdnews24.com.