Dhaka, Dec. 4 -- The government has decided to sharply reduce import duties on legally imported smartphones in an effort to bring down handset prices and curb the widespread influx of undocumented devices.
At present, smartphones imported through formal channels face a cumulative tax burden of about 61 percent. Officials at the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology confirmed that the process to bring this rate down has already begun.
However, the ministry noted that any reduction must be aligned with duties and VAT applied to locally assembled and manufactured smartphones.
Bangladesh now has 13-14 active mobile device factories, and imbalanced taxation could discourage existing and prospective foreign investmen...