As the telecom sector keeps making profit during the shutdown following the fact that the number of phone calls and use of the internet has increased drastically, now the government is planning to increase revenue collection from this sector.
According to the Ministry of Finance, and the National Board of Revenue (NBR), the telecom sector is one of the few sectors that have not been affected by the virus pandemic.
Now the NBR is paying special attention for collecting extra revenue from this sector during the next financial year. This will increase the cost of voice calls and internet use from this month.
As a result, in the new financial year, the supplementary duty for talking on mobile phones is being increased from 10 percent to 15 percent in a bid to bring some relief to the country’s troubled financial sector, said finance ministry officials.
On condition of anonymity, an NBR official said beside the increase of supplementary duty, similar duty may be applied on mobile handset import too. However, due to the increase of duty, the cost of voice calls may increase from this month, he added.
Economists opined that this will help the government to increase its revenue collection while technology experts fear this will reduce the voice calls and internet use and may hinder the growth of a Digital Bangladesh.
Professor Selim Raihan, a teacher of the Department of Economics of University of Dhaka, and Executive Director of South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) told Bangladesh Post, “Increasing supplementary duty on telecom sector may help the government to increase revenue, but the authority concerned should search for new sources for revenue generation rather imposing additional burden on the existing ones”.
If the charges increase for using mobile phone, poor people will be affected much, while pace for Digital Bangladesh may stumble, he added.
Meanwhile, the mobile operators of the country opined that such supplementary duty increase will lead them to experience a sharp fall of subscribers and their existence will also be in challenge.
As the country’s economy continues to reel from the lasting impact of the Covid-9, the telecom sector was not infected like other sectors due to the condition of ‘work from home’, ‘social distancing’, gaming, live streaming, and others.
The use of mobile voice calls has increased sharply while internet use has also increased by 25 to 30 percent. Since the coronavirus outbreak in the country, all commercial activities, corporate companies business, banks, call centres, health services, schools, and others are now mostly dependent on the internet to access or provide their respective work, service, or assignment.
According to the finance ministry officials, subscribers have to spend Tk 133 to get Tk 100 equal service or voice talk or in other words, spending Tk 100 subscribers will receive service up to Tk 75.
