Prices that likely to go up, go down

Budget
Budget

Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Thursday proposed changes in his budget speech to duties on different products, which will lead to increase and decrease in their prices.

The prices of some goods may go up as a supplementary duty has been proposed.

Up: Prices of the following products may increase:
Cosmetics, ceramics, helicopter renting, plastic products, aluminium products cooking oils, medicines, marriage centres, ice cream, astrology, drama, movie, handmade confectioneries, milk, sugar, body spray, ovens, broiler and grillers.
Vehicle registration and fitness certificates may become costlier as 10 per cent supplementary duty is imposed on them.
Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said, “In order to improve the traffic congestion situation and develop the public sector transport system, 10 per cent supplementary duty on issuance or renewal of all kinds of vehicles registration, route permit, fitness certificates, ownership certificate etc. except for passenger buses, trucks, lorries, three wheeler, ambulances and school buses may be imposed.”

Costs of mobile phone services and imported smart phones are likely to increase too. But the price of feature phone will not increase.
“As smart phone is used by affluent people, I propose to increase customs duty of smart phone to 25 per cent. However, customs duty of feature phone will remain unchanged as it is used by relatively poor people,” AHM Mustafa Kamal said.

Also, cigarette, bidi, zarda and gul, optical fibre cable, pebbles broken stone, particle board will increase.

Down:Prices of the following products may reduce: Lightening arresters, firefighting equipment, building bricks, coco substrate and coco pellet used in home gardening, gold, and electric fan.

Terming lightning as natural disaster, finance minister said, “A number of people have been killed and many important electrical equipment have been destroyed because of lightening. To prevent these damages, I propose to reduce the duty of lightning arrester from 10 per cent to 5 per cent.”
Prices of cancer-related medicines and liquid Oxygen is likely to decrease too.
“Exemptions and concessionary rate of duties of some pharmaceutical raw materials including that of cancer medicines, have been proposed. Moreover, I propose to decrease regulatory duty from 20% to 10% on import of liquid Oxygen, Nitrogen, Argon and Carbon Dioxide for making these lifesaving gases available to the poor patients at low cost.”
Prices of firefighting equipment will also decrease.
Referring to a recent increase in fire incidents, Kamal said, “At present, only VAT registered industries can import firefighting equipment at a concessionary rate. To combat the rise of fire incidents, this facility should be extended to all and I propose to allow this facility to all VAT registered service oriented organisations like hotels, hospitals, educational institutions, etc. I also propose to include a few more firefighting equipment in the concessionary list.”

Poultry and fish feed ingredients, power tiller, combined harvester price would also go down.