The National Board of Revenue is mulling to provide duty exemption on import of furniture, equipments and other items needed for newly established upper-graded hotels in a bid to promote tourism sector in the country, officials of the NBR said.
They said the revenue board was considering the issue positively after getting applications from Shena Hotel Development Ltd and La Rose Centre for duty exemption on import of furniture and equipments for their two hotels in Chittagong and Sylhet respectively that involved around Tk 145 crore of revenues.
In their applications, they requested the NBR to impose duty on import items considering those items as capital machinery as they are making the investment to promote tourism and services sectors.
Shena Hotel Development Ltd, the owning company of Radisson Blu Water Garden Hotel Dhaka, is constructing its second hotel — Radisson Bay View — in the Chittagong city while La Rose Centre has constructed La Rose Hotel and Suites in the Sylhet city.
However, there is a difference in opinions among the NBR officials whether the NBR should provide such facility to the hotels in general or analysing case to case applications. The NBR had earlier rejected some applications of different hotels while approved of some others.
The NBR officials said that recently many organisations were showing interest to establish upper-graded hotels in Bangladesh considering its business and tourism prospects. So they assumed that the NBR would be getting applications for such exemption.
In this context, the NBR feels necessity of a policy for accepting or rejecting such appeal, they said.
In 2012, the NBR, however, rejected an application of Sea Pearl Beach Resort and Spa Limited seeking such exemption though it had provided such exemption to few hotels like Westin Hotel and Hotel Sarina in Dhaka, Hotel Seagull in Cox’s Bazar and Bashundhara City Shopping Mall.
The NBR at a board meeting held on Monday discussed the issue thoroughly and decided to seek opinion from the civil aviation and tourism ministry on this issue.
The tourism ministry determines classification of a hotel like five-star, four-star or three-star and promotes tourism sectors in the country.
‘The NBR will request the ministry to set standards of upper-graded hotels and a guideline for providing such duty exemption,’ a senior NBR official told New Age on Tuesday.
He said that the ministry would be requested to prepare a guideline describing what duty benefits quantity could be offered to the newly established hotels,
to what extent the hotels would get such benefits and whether there would be any condition or restriction for getting such exemption.
The request will be made very soon, he added.
After getting opinion from the ministry, the NBR will decide the fate of the applications from Radisson and La Rose, the officials said.
Radisson applied to the NBR for exemption of around Tk 137 crore while La Rose sought for exemption of around Tk 8 crore, the NBR officials said adding that Radisson demanded itself as a five-star hotel while La Rose called itself a three-star one.
Out of Tk 137 crore, Radisson sought for exemption of around Tk 60 crore duties on import of luxury vehicles like Limousine cars.
The NBR officials said if Radisson was provided with the duty exemption, vehicles might be excluded.
Among other things, a hotel needs bedding items, kitchenware, dinnerware, furniture, and electronics and electrical equipments.