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The immediate steps are neither mysterious nor technically complex: Broadening the VAT base by reducing exemptions, strengthening the Large Taxpayer Unit to capture income from professionals and the informal wealthy, and automating tax administration to reduce discretion and corruption.
According to the Finance Minister's statement in parliament, the government has already paid more than 80,000 crore taka and will have to pay another 100,000 crore taka in the future to maintain the Sammilito Islami Bank under the Bank Resolution Ordinance.
The BNP government has now inherited the institutional resistance it generated and will need to find a way to manouvre around it. Bangladesh will find it extremely hard to finance its development ambitions unless it significantly improves its tax collection systems and addresses the political economy of doing so.
The constraint has never been a lack of opportunity. It has been risk, real and perceived. That is where development institutions can play a catalyzing role: Financing infrastructure, supporting regulatory reform and reducing risk.
