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Fridge importers demand duty cuts

Star Business Report
Refrigerator and air-conditioner merchants yesterday urged the government to reduce import duty on those products in the 2012-13 budget.
"Bangladesh imports 88 percent of the products the country uses, and the rest are assembled locally,” said
Lutfar Rahman, president of Bangladesh Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Merchants Association (BRAMA).
"But the country's present duty structure is not business-friendly at all,” Rahman told reporters at the National Press Club in Dhaka yesterday. The government imposed 136 percent duty on refrigerators and 189 percent duty on airconditioners, he said.
But a local company enjoys the privilege of importingparts by paying only 14 percent duty, he said.
"But even after getting such a huge opportunity, the company sells products at a price which is close to the prices of imported items,” he said. “So, providing such benefit to a local company does not help consumers.”
“In addition, the government is losing out huge revenues as it waived VAT on imports of spare parts and assembling products for this company,” said Rahman, also the CEO of Rahman Enterprise.
Now, the difference in duty between imported and locally assembled items are 122 percent for refrigerators and 176percent for air conditioners, which leaves local importers in an unfair competition, Rahman said.
The industries ministry proposed to make the difference in duty between imported and locally assembled items at 20 percent. The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry proposed to make it 30 percent to make the sector business-friendly.
The difference in duty on such items in India is 26 percent, Rahman said. Rahman also urged the government to withdraw 20 percent regulatory duty to help the importers sustain in business.
Nearly 10 lakh people are directly and indirectly involved in the sector, so the government needs to take measures to ensure a healthy competition between importers and assemblers to safeguard the local industry. "If the government maintains the high import duty, many importers will go out of business and the sector may collapse, leaving many unemployed,” Rahman said.
At present, the local demand for refrigerators is more than 10 lakh units and air-conditioners is 1 lakh units a year, according to BRAMA. The importers paid Tk 800 crore for refrigerators and Tk 400 crore for air-conditioners in tax to the National