TBM Report
In a definitive legislative intervention aimed at reducing consumer tax burdens and restoring institutional integrity, Prime Minister Tariq Rahman proposed a series of comprehensive fiscal amendments to the national budget. Addressing the Jatiya Sangsad during the budget defense session on Monday (June 29, 2026), the Prime Minister announced the absolute revocation of controversial provisions that allowed the whitening of undisclosed wealth, while simultaneously outlining a legal roadmap to repatriate looted capital. Terming the fiscal framework a “Nation-Building Budget,” he called for rare bipartisan synergy between treasury and opposition benches to stabilize the macroeconomic ecosystem.
The Prime Minister underscored the catastrophic economic insolvency inherited from the previous authoritarian regime, noting that legacy systemic corruption had deeply compromised the banking sector and equity markets. Highlighting historical anomalies within the capital markets where vulnerable retail investors faced total ruin under state-sponsored syndicates, Prime Minister Rahman guaranteed that the current administration is converting the capital market into a viable platform for long-term industrial investment under specialized fiscal leadership. Furthermore, he committed the state to enforcing absolute structural discipline within the banking sector to neutralize non-performing loans (NPLs) and institutional credit theft.
In a landmark transparency disclosure, the Prime Minister assured Parliament that multi-billion dollar laundered assets are actively being tracked for repatriation. The sovereign state has officially dispatched 23 Mutual Legal Assistance Requests (MLARs) across 13 sovereign jurisdictions, while 15 compromised commercial banking institutions have finalized over 60 Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) with global asset recovery firms to systematically trace and retrieve state wealth under international statutory frameworks.
To formalize an inclusive revenue ecosystem, the Prime Minister advocated for expanding the tax base rather than escalating individual tax burdens, while systematically eliminating bureaucratic harassment. He requested the Finance Minister to elevate the individual tax-free income threshold to BDT 4,00,000 for the immediate fiscal cycles, with a progressive multi-year trajectory scaling up to BDT 5,00,000 by FY 2030-31. Additionally, pointing out public anxieties regarding land registration matrices, the Prime Minister ordered the absolute withdrawal of specific tax compliance rules to prevent any implicit window for the normalization of parallel economies.
Promoting youth employment and domestic industrial resilience, the proposed amendments slash corporate taxes on private universities from 10 percent to 5 percent, conditional on structural investments in research and language laboratories. It further reduces VAT on digital advertisements, OTT platforms, and search engines from 15 percent to 5 percent to disincentivize informal Hundi channels. For localized manufacturing, the Prime Minister announced total tariff exemptions on aquaculture feeds, pharmaceutical raw materials, and precision components, alongside an immediate operational directive to abolish all custom duties on bicycles to support low-income mobility. Concluding his address under the ideological framework of the “July Charter,” the Prime Minister committed to comprehensive constitutional reforms to guarantee judicial independence by requesting an immediate emergency allocation of BDT 600 million across the Supreme Court and Ministry of Law.
, the Prime Minister announced the absolute revocation of controversial provisions that allowed the whitening of undisclosed wealth, while simultaneously outlining a legal roadmap to repatriate looted capital. Terming the fiscal framework a "Nation-Building Budget," he called for rare bipartisan synergy between treasury and opposition benches to stabilize the macroeconomic ecosystem.){kind=link}