Page 7 - VAT-Administration

This revenue has been working as the lifeblood for our economy. As mentioned earlier,
Bangladesh was recognised as one of the least developed countries during the first couple of
decades after independence. The economy was mainly dependent on the foreign aid,
donations and loans. The relentless efforts in earning revenue by the National Board of
Revenue from the internal sources made a phase shift of our economy. Bangladesh has
become a leading example in the world in achieving superior performance in different criteria
set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and made a phase shift to the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDG). In the World Leaders’ Summit at New York in 2015, global
leaders approved the concept paper titled ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development’, containing 17 goals and 169 targets. Goal no 17.1 puts emphasis
on optimizing internal resources by directing the member states to Strengthen domestic
resource mobilization, through international support to developing countries to improve
domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection. Goal 17.1 is called Enabler of all
other Goals. So, the revenue is the main focus for any development. In line with SDG, in
the 3rd UN Conference on Financing and Development at Addis Ababa, world leaders agreed
on 6 point action agenda of which the first agendum was ‘Domestic Resource Mobilization
and its effective utilization’. Bangladesh, as a member state of the United Nation, has always
been in line with these agenda and that paves the pathway towards modernization of the
National Board of Revenue and all its field offices.

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