Tax authorities will install ‘data forensic laboratory’ next month to detect tax evasion through paperless accounts system of the corporate taxpayers. The lab is set to start its operation from February at the Central Intelligence Cell (CIC) with advance devices that are capable of detecting concealment of electronically maintained accounts information of the corporate houses. Taxmen are currently conducting assessment under manual system due to the absence of modern equipments to find out mismatch and irregularities in electronically maintained financial records, FE reports.

Bangladesh’s annual inflation in December eased for a fifth straight month to its lowest level in more than two years, but price pressures could climb again on renewed political unrest. The consumer price index in December fell to 6.11 percent from a year earlier, the lowest since October 2012, from 6.21 percent in November, officials at the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. Food prices were 5.86 percent higher than a year earlier in December, lower than November’s 6.44 percent rise. In contrast, non-food inflatio...

Bangladesh Bank on Monday said scheduled banks would have to deposit in the central bank three per cent fund of their undisbursed farm loans against their target amount for a certain financial year in a bid to speed up the BB’s agriculture loan disbursement programme. The BB issued a circular to managing directors and chief executive officers of all banks saying that the central bank would repay the three per cent fund to the respective banks if they distribute the undisbursed amount with their fresh targets for the next financial year. The central bank will not...

The Centre for Policy Dialogue yesterday came down hard on the government for recapitalising the state banks despite their financial malpractices, and rescheduling the bad loans of Beximco Group. The think-tank went on to term the recapitalisation, which is being done with taxpayers’ money, as ‘nationalisation of losses’ and the rescheduling ‘denationalisation of profits’. This is not a good sign for the economy and the banking sector, Mustafizur Rahman, executive director of CPD, said at the unveiling of a report on the economic performance so far this fiscal year.