Finance Bill passed in Parliament without major changes

GB NEWS 24 DESK//

Lawmakers passed the bill on a voice vote on Monday, reports bdnews24.com.

On Jun 11, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal tabled a Tk 5.68 trillion fiscal budget for the upcoming year along with the Finance Bill.

The main budget will be passed on Tuesday ahead of the new fiscal year which begins on July 1.

Although the finance minister did make a few tweaks to the bill, most of the other major proposals remained unchanged.

Despite widespread calls to review the plan to raise supplementary duty on mobile phone services to 15 percent from 10 percent, that too was not amended.

Kamal had proposed the introduction of an incentive for investment of the untaxed money by paying 10 percent tax to boost fund flow into the flagging capital market with a lock-in period of three years.

However, the conditions for investing untaxed income in the capital market have been relaxed, with lock-in period revised down to one year.

After accepting the recommendations of a few members of the government, the opposition Jatiya Party and the BNP, Kamal gave his concluding remarks before the bill was passed. Earlier, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina also took part in the budget discussion.

As per convention, the prime minister usually proposes changes to the bill before the finance minister delivers his closing speech.

The finance minister then takes the prime minister’s recommendations into account and incorporates them into the bill before presenting it to parliament for approval.

However, the prime minister did not propose any changes to the bill this time.