Dhaka bourse urges reconsidering key budget proposals

The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), in its budget reaction, has urged the government to reconsider some of its key proposals to be reflected in the final budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

DSE Chairman Professor Hafiz Md Hasan Babu, in a press statement, also thanked the government for continuing the prevailing support for the country's capital market.

Of the major pre-budget proposals by the premier bourse, he requested the government to make income from all bonds tax-exempt that would help expand the country's nascent bond market.

The DSE also urged to treat the source tax on dividends as the ultimate tax liability of investors as the dividend tax is paid after-tax corporate profits and the dividend tax is a kind of secondary or tertiary taxation.

Also, the advance tax on stockbroker's commission income should be rationalised and reduced to the rational level where it was a decade ago, the DSE said, adding that the excessive tax on secondary market turnover was hurting trading as well as the stockbrokers, while many of them were bleeding in the business due to the dull trading.

The DSE reiterated its proposal for offering SME companies a tax waiver against their listing on the small cap platform of the bourses as listing increased their transparency and led to a higher revenue for the government later.

The capital market problems had been almost missing in the proposed budget and there had been no announcement of new fiscal incentives or facilitation of its development, said observers who advocate for incentivising stock market listing of top businesses that helps fair distribution of corporate fortune, a balanced financing of economic development through businesses and of course, higher revenue for the government.