Mobile handsets to be costlier

The price of the handsets will go up as the government today proposed 5 percent value-added tax on mobile handset sales.

"I propose to withdraw the existing 5 percent VAT exemption at trading stage of mobile phone sets," said Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said in his budget speech.

Presently, there is about 58 percent tax on smartphone imports, whereas the tax on the locally assembled and manufactured handsets varies from 3 percent to 27 percent.

The number of locally manufactured and imported handsets was 4.12 crore in 2020-21.