Newsprint duty waiver, a decision helpful for press freedom

The government decision to exempt import duty on newsprint has fulfilled a long-felt demand of the newspaper industry. In the budget estimate the proposal was to reduce duty on the item to 15 per cent from 25 per cent.

The adoption of the budget on Thursday by President Iajuddin Ahmed was marked by exemption of 126 other items including industrial raw materials from import duty.

Duty on newsprint had been the highest in the subcontinent and used to be a burden on the newspaper industry as import duty, development surcharge and advance income tax combined ultimately added about 40 per cent to the cost of imported newsprint. The outcome was that newspaper owners and managers found it difficult to run sustainably.

The high import duty was imposed mainly to give protection to locally produced newsprint. Newspapers had also been bound by an obligation to meet at least 50 per cent of their newsprint consumption from local sources. The press people have been complaining that such high duty, was levied at the instance of local newsprint producers for their own gain.

Only a few professionally-run newspapers could absorb with great pains the shock of high price of newsprint. Newspaper owners and journalists during the last 10 years approached the political governments time and again to help reduce the burden of duty and taxes on newspapers but in vain.

It now appears from various investigation reports that those enterprises which used to enjoy the benefit of protection at the cost of the newspaper industry had deals with political decision-makers.

While meeting the demand for duty-free import of newsprint, the government has set a condition that the newspapers enjoying this benefit would have to procure newsprint utilisation declaration from the ministries of industries and commerce. Obviously, this measure is intended to guard against the abuse of the duty exemption by unscrupulous people.

While welcoming this gesture of the government, specially that of the Finance Adviser Dr. Mirza Azizul Islam, to the newspaper industry, which is performing an important developmental role in promoting the establishment of transparency and accountability, it has to be borne in mind that industry leaders should help guard against misuse or abuse of this benefit that they sought only for independent and responsible journalism.