The National Board of Revenue (NBR) will distribute 10,000 Electronic Fiscal Devices (EFD) among businesses free of cost to encourage its use.
NBR VAT Online Project will invite tender next month (October) to procure Electronic Fiscal Device Management System (EFDMS), the main server of the automated VAT system, along with 10,000 EFDs, officials said.
The 10,000 EFDs will be given to some selected businesses in the first phase, they said.
International suppliers with local partners will be eligible to supply the devices with five-year after sales maintenance guarantee, said a senior NBR official.
In the second phase, NBR's enlisted vendors will supply the devices to other businesses.
The price of each device may be between Tk 20,000 and Tk 25,000.
In 2016, the government allocated Tk 1.0 billion for installation of the system by providing 20,000 devices to traders at a subsidised rate.
NBR has made use of EFD mandatory for 13 types of businesses in city corporation areas from November 1.
However, businesses in the district towns have to install EFD by December 1.
All of the businesses, superstores and shops that have already installed Electronic Cash Registers (ECR) have to replace their devices with EFD.
In 2009, NBR made use of ECR mandatory for 11 types of shops, and identified 11,005 shops eligible for installation of the machine.
However, poor implementation of that order forced NBR to replace the system.
EFD will help to keep recorded data of financial transactions of the businesses, the officials added.
According to NBR, EFD must have interconnectivity with its EFDMS through Application Programming Interface (API) to monitor the transactions.
The device should be made in such a manner, so that it can be activated or deactivated by NBR through remote control. Proper use of EFD will be monitored and inspected by NBR.
It must have programming capacity to exchange information with EFDMS of NBR. Businesses will not be able to print receipt without the approved code of NBR.
Use of EFD has been made mandatory for residential hotel, restaurant and fast food shop, sweetmeat shop, furniture, dress or boutique shop, beauty parlour, electronic or electrical home appliance seller, community centre, posh shopping mall, departmental store, general store/ super shop, large and medium businesses (retail and wholesale), and gold and silver traders.
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