The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has withdrawn the import duty both on raw and refined sugar in order to enable consumers to buy the sweetener at reduced rates.
In its notification, the customs authority lifted Tk 3,000 specific duty on the import of raw and Tk 6,000 on refined sugar per tonne with immediate effect.
The NBR also reduced the regulatory duty on the import of sugar to 25 per cent from 30 per cent, according to the notification.
The customs authority also removed the tariff value to assess the duty of imported sugar.
The reduced import tax, which comes following a proposal from the commerce ministry that looks to bring down the prices of sugar from its current record level of up to Tk 120 per kilogramme, will be in place until May 30 this year.
After the reduction, the overall import cost of raw and refined sugar is expected to decline by Tk 6,500 and Tk 9,000 per tonne, respectively, according to an estimate by the NBR.
A top official of Meghna Group of Industries, a processor, said the impact of the duty cut will be about Tk 5.5 per kg at the retail level.
Bangladesh requires 20 lakh tonnes of sugar every year. It imports more than 98 per cent of sugar in raw form to meet the demand as domestic production is too scanty.
Private refiners import raw sugar mainly from Brazil and Argentina.
Refiners earlier blamed the inadequate supply of gas to the mills, the increased cost of the US dollar and the higher import duty for the spike in the price of the item in the local market.
Gas supply to factories across the country has been hampered in recent months after the government stopped buying liquefied natural gas from the international spot markets to save to foreign currency reserves, which have declined about 30 per cent in the past one year owing to escalated import bills.
Similarly, a 25 per cent depreciation of the taka against the US dollar has made imports costlier for Bangladesh.
The total tax on the import of raw sugar was 61 per cent before the removal of the import duty and regulatory duty cut.
