e-CAB shows mixed reaction over budget

E-Commerce Association of Bangladesh e-CAB feels that the Smart Bangladesh plan has gained prominence in the proposed budget for the fiscal year 2024-25. Finance Secretary of the organization Asif Ahnaf shared a mixed reaction on behalf of the organization on the budget on Friday.

Applauding the increase in tax exemption period for IT and software sector for 3 years at the beginning of the budget assessment, e-Cab president Shomi Kaiser said that e-CAB proposed in the budget will play a special role in the development of this sector by keeping this tax exemption on e-learning and e-applications. However, we demand that website hosting and cloud services, the backbone and important part of the entire digital industry, should be exempted from tax.

Meanwhile Finance Secretary Asif Ahnaf said that Business Identity Platform (DBID) was a strong proposal of e-CAB to establish transparency, responsibility and accountability in the activities of digital commerce organizations. Although it has already been launched, e-commerce organizations are still facing difficulties in accepting DBID as there is no separate authority for the digital commerce sector. Also, the functionality of DBID is not yet clear.

Also, e-CAB Finance Secretary feels that there is a need to create extensive public awareness after the piloting of e-CAB's proposed Central Compliance Management System to protect consumer rights.

According to him, smart logistics is an important part of e-commerce. In this regard, e-CAB has fully cooperated in the formulation of the "National Logistics Policy" of the government. However, for the implementation of this policy, smart logistics companies need to be exempted from tax for a minimum of five years and in addition to “smart post offices” at the rural level and cross-border e-commerce expansion, smart logistics companies need to be exempted from postage. Above all, since the logistics sector has been declared as a priority sector in the proposed budget, I am calling for VAT waiver applicable on warehouse and transportation of smart logistics institutions.

Although cashless payment is encouraged in various ways in the proposed budget, e-CAB has demanded to provide a minimum two percent cash incentive equivalent to the payment charge in this sector to encourage digital payment while stating that 'business establishments have to pay payment charges for accepting payments'. At the same time, special attention has been called for cashless measures in the education and medical sectors.

Asif said, e-commerce is the most growing sector of the country, in the last 5 years, about 2 lakh women and young entrepreneurs have been created and more than 5 lakh jobs have been created, so we demand tax holiday for e-commerce entrepreneurs till 2031 for the development of this sector. We hope that the e-commerce sector will be given more priority in the implementation of Smart Bangladesh and determination of smart economy and the proposed demands of e-CAB may be taken into special consideration by the government.