Prime Minister Mark Carney and the leader of Canada's oil‑rich Alberta province took a major step Friday toward building an oil pipeline that could substantially increase crude exports to Asia, reports AFP.

Expanding overseas energy exports has emerged as a key part of Carney's strategy to reduce Canada's economic reliance on the United States, but plans for a new pipeline are facing stiff resistance over environmental concerns.

Alberta's conservative Premier Danielle Smith was a relentless critic of Carney's climate‑focused predecessor, Justin Trudeau, accusing him of suffocating the province's oil industry, but she has sought to work with Carney.

Carney and Smith cleared a key hurdle toward a new pipeline on Friday by signing a deal on industrial carbon pricing, a system that extracts a fee from large‑scale CO2 emitters.

Oil companies have been critical of the system, but Smith said Friday that the prohibitive rates set under Trudeau's government had been "rolled back."

Ottawa and the provincial government agreed that the rate would gradually rise to a fee of CAN$130 ($96) per tonne of CO2 emitted by 2040. Trudeau had called for a rate of CAN$170 by 2030.

At the announcement in Calgary, Carney said a final proposal for a pipeline that will serve Asian markets should be submitted to his major projects office by July 1.

He said Canada had earned "the trust of Asian countries who want our energy because they know that we are a safe, stable, reliable partner in a world that is anything but."

Carney has repeatedly warned that the trade hostility ushered in by President Donald Trump is not a passing phase and Canada needs to plan for a fundamentally different economic relationship with the US, including by broadening ties with Asia.

Pipeline approval is also contingent on developing what Carney called "the largest global initiative for carbon capture and storage."

Some Indigenous groups and First Nations have said they will oppose any pipeline that runs from Alberta to Canada's Pacific Coast.

The leader of the left‑wing New Democratic Party, Avi Lewis, charged that Friday's announcement "marks the Carney government's official surrender to the oil and gas lobby."

The announcement also comes at a fraught political moment.

Alberta separatists have built record‑high support of roughly 30 percent for independence by railing against Ottawa's control over the provincial oil industry.

Carney, who was raised in Alberta, insists the province can thrive within a united Canada.

END/AFP/ASA

Companies and organisations will be required to file tax returns on the income generated by employee welfare funds from the current fiscal year and pay a 27.5 percent tax on the earnings. 

The Income Tax Act 2023 incorporates the provision, lifting the tax exemption and amnesty on the compulsion to file returns for funds such as provident funds, gratuity funds and workers' profit participation funds maintained by the private sector.

The law, however, has exempted government-managed provident funds from taxation, raising questions.

TIM Nurul Kabir, executive director of the Foreign Investors' Chamber of Commerce & Industry, said there were many other avenues to collect tax.

"Employees benefit from provident funds after their retirement. So, the authority should not slap taxes on retirement benefit."

He said while levying the tax, the government has not treated provident funds of the private and public sectors equally.

"It is discriminatory," he said, adding that they would appeal to the tax authority for the withdrawal of the tax on income from provident funds.

Debabrata Roy Chowdhury, director for legal, regulatory and corporate affairs at Nestlé Bangladesh PLC, said the introduction of income tax on trust funds would lower the overall income from such schemes.

"This will have an adverse long-term impact on retired employees of private organisations."

Chowdhury urged the authority to address the issue in line with the spirit of the government's initiatives aimed at ensuring social security for private sector employees.

"The recent introduction of the universal pension scheme for private sector employees is a good example of that."

A senior official of the NBR, on condition of anonymity, said the income of government-managed provident funds was exempted in line with the Provident Fund Act 1925.

He said provident funds under the private sector had been historically exempted and there was no requirement to submit tax returns. As a result, it was unclear whether the funds were properly utilised.

"From now onwards, we will see proper disclosure."

The tax official said the contribution of payroll tax is about 3 percent of the total income tax although it should increase as the economy is growing.

Md Shahadat Hossain, a former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh, said income from investment in savings certificates, where people invest as a source of future earnings, is already taxed.

"From that perspective, the imposition of tax on provident and other employee welfare funds seems okay."

However, Towfiqul Islam Khan, senior research fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue, said social protection for private sector employees was low.

"Provident and other workers' welfare-related funds provide little social protection. The imposition of tax will increase inequality. But there can't be any discrimination in taxation between private and government provident funds."

Khan, citing the latest income tax law that replaced the Income Tax Ordinance 1984, said the NBR tried to find new avenues to increase tax collection and improve the nation's revenue-gross domestic product ratio, which is one of the lowest in the world.

"We can see the desperation of the tax authority to boost collection. This ultimately reveals the inability of the NBR to catch the tax evaders and illicit money makers."