Sohel Parvez

Electronic fiscal devices (EFDs), the much-talked-about e-cash registers promoted by the revenue authority as a tool to curb tax dodging, finally began to show up at retail stores in cities.

Farmers are getting higher prices for raw jute after cyclone Amphan and prolonged floods damaged part of their cash crop, but millers are not happy with the price spiral, which they say will push up production costs and affect demand from buyers abroad.

The government is considering giving priority to leasing out state-owned jute mills to the private sector so that production could resume within a short time, according to officials of the textiles and jute ministry and industry stakeholders.

Bangladesh has more than 180,000 officially registered companies. Yet, roughly 35,000 of those businesses, that is just one-fifth of them, file income tax returns regularly -- a dismal picture even though rules make it compulsory for businesses to file returns annually.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has brought about many changes to everyday life, especially the way people deal with the outside world.

Paddy prices have shot up to very high margins for a decline in its availability in suburban haats and bazars owing to big farmers and seasonal stockists taking it slow while releasing the staple.

AB Bank has put the factory of Aman Feed and its collateral on sale for its failure to pay Tk 268.40 crore in loans and interest within the sanctioned timeframe of July.

The National Board of Revenue is finally going to roll out the much-talked electronic fiscal devices (EFDs) as part of its effort to curb evasion of value-added tax paid by customers while purchasing goods and services.

The current aman paddy cultivation season has come as a blessing for public and private seed producers and marketers as farmers, encouraged by higher prices of boro, bought a bigger amount of seeds this time to maximise profits by increasing harvest.

The recent nationwide closure of all economic activities for two-and-a-half months has doubled extreme poverty in Bangladesh, raising the number of the country’s ultra-poor from 10.5 per cent of the population to 20.5 per cent as of June, according to the Planning Commission (PC).

Airline passengers will face higher ticket prices from next week onwards as the aviation authority has imposed new fees aimed at funding airport development and strengthening security, according to a notice from the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB).

Redwanur Rahman Jewel’s dreams had come true when he opened his bookstore in May last year as it soon turned into a veritable hub for readers and writers alike.

The economy, it seems, is in a sort of limbo, neither fully on recess nor roaring ahead.

The customs authority has relaxed its rules in regards to the submission of Certificates of Origin (CoO), a declaration of the place of manufacture for any product, for goods imported under the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) trade pact in the SAARC bloc.

A deluge of missed calls greeted me as I glanced over my phone in late afternoon on Saturday. They were all from the same unknown number.

Everything was going well for the online tax return filing project until the end of 2019.

The customs authority plans to install more luggage scanners at all air and land ports in a bid to curb smuggling and free travellers of the hassle of discretion-based checks at arrival and departure gates.

Floods have already damaged crops worth nearly Tk 350 crore and are going to pile up further losses on tens of thousands of farmers, according to an official estimate.

Potato shipments have rebounded to an extent as revenue from the sector nearly doubled in the just-concluded fiscal year thanks to exporters’ efforts to exploit the gap in the international market created by reduced supply from China and Pakistan following lower crop production due to the coronavirus fallout.

The National Board of Revenue yesterday rolled out the electronic payment of value-added tax, taking a much-delayed big step forward to fully automating a system that would enable businesses to comply at reduced time and cost.