Finance
Reserve Reserve again reaches $31 billion mark
Dhaka, June 26: The country's foreign exchange reserves have started to return to a positive trend. The reserve increased again in two days. Reserves rose to USD 30.85 billion on Sunday. This information was obtained from Bangladesh Bank sources.
Earlier last Thursday (June 22), the country's foreign exchange reserves were 30.30 billion dollars. The previous day on Wednesday, the reserve crossed the threshold of 29 billion dollars and stood at 30.2 billion dollars. On June 25, the reserve was 29.96 billion dollars.
Meanwhile, in the last 11 months (July-May) of the current fiscal year, expatriate Bangladeshis have sent 1 thousand 944 crore 20 lakh US dollars as remittances to the country. This is 1.1 percent higher than the same period last fiscal.
Finance Minister Afam Mostafa Kamal gave this information in response to a question marked with a star presented on the table of Mamunur Rashid Kiran, a member of the government party in Parliament on Sunday.
In response to another question from opposition Jatiya Party (JP) member Masiur Rahman Ranga, the finance minister said that income tax is already levied at source on savings bond dividends and prize bond awards. However, the sale of savings bonds and prize bonds did not decrease as a result. There is currently no plan to withdraw income tax at source.
In response to a question from Habibur Rahman, another member of the government party, the finance minister said that the target of revenue collection of the National Board of Revenue in the previous fiscal year was Tk 3,33,000 crore. Among them, the target achievement rate at import and export level was 93.15 percent. At the local level, Musak's revenue target achievement rate was 84.70 percent and income tax and travel tax target achievement rate was 97.17 percent. Tk 3,896 crore has decreased due to limited activities of the government's development projects due to the global pandemic. Tk 344 crore less revenue has been collected due to exemption of tax on some products at import and local level. The power supply sector collected Tk 506 crore less revenue than the target, as the production of some key sectors, including ceramics, fell by 60 to 70 percent due to the energy crisis.
