Brent crude climbs above $111 as Gulf attacks raise pressure on Bangladesh's fuel costs

A husband and wife died after an explosion caused by a leaking cooking gas cylinder at their rented home in Tongi, Gazipur, and their teenage daughter is being treated in hospital in Dhaka, police and hospital officials said.

The couple were Lal Chan Mia, 60, and his wife Nasima, 50, both garment workers, according to The Daily Star. Their 16-year-old daughter is in intensive care at the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery in the capital.

The explosion happened at about 6:00am on Wednesday at the family's rented house in the Mudafa area of Cherag Ali, under Tongi West police station. According to the officer-in-charge of the police station, Md Arifur Rahman, gas leaked from a pipe attached to a cooking cylinder and collected inside the house before it ignited. Neighbours rescued the three and took them to the burn institute, where they arrived at about 7:30am, The Daily Star reported.

The parents died at the institute at about 8pm on Wednesday. The officer-in-charge confirmed the deaths on Thursday at about 12:30pm and said the blast was caused by the cylinder leak, Dhaka Tribune reported. Dhaka Tribune said the family lived in a house owned by Fakhrul Hasan near Master Bari in Ward 52 of Mudafa, and that the bodies were handed to relatives after legal formalities were completed.

Dr Sultan Mahmud Sikder, a resident surgeon at the burn institute, said all three patients were in critical condition when they were admitted, Dhaka Tribune reported.

Cooking gas cylinders are used in millions of Bangladeshi homes, especially where piped gas is not available, and they are connected to stoves with a rubber hose and a regulator. A leak in a closed room can allow gas to build up, and a spark can then set it off. Fatal cylinder explosions have been reported in Gazipur, Dhaka and other districts in recent years, often in densely built neighbourhoods where homes and kitchens are close together.

Several details of Wednesday's incident are still not public. Police have said the gas leaked from a cylinder pipe, but they have not said what ignited it, whether the cylinder, the regulator or the hose was at fault, or whether any technical inspection will be carried out. No finding has been announced on whether the cylinder was bought from a licensed dealer or whether it was in good condition. Police have also not said whether anyone will face questions over the leak, and no case details were given.

The family's rented home was in one of the busiest parts of Tongi, a township in Gazipur just north of Dhaka where many garment workers live in rented rooms. Both parents worked in the garment industry, The Daily Star said, a detail that underlines how common such shared, tightly packed housing is in the area.

What happens next centres on the daughter, who remains in the hospital's intensive care unit, and on the police inquiry into the leak. Officers have so far described the case as an accident caused by a leaking cylinder pipe, and no further announcement has been made about the investigation.

Cylinder safety is a recurring issue in Bangladesh because so many households depend on LPG. Officials and safety campaigners have long advised families to check hoses and regulators for cracks, to keep kitchens ventilated, and to turn off the cylinder valve when the stove is not in use, though such guidance is not always followed and enforcement is limited.

For the family in Tongi, the practical questions are now the medical care of the surviving daughter and the formal end of the police process. For the wider public, the case is a reminder of how quickly a small leak in an ordinary kitchen can turn fatal.

Bangladesh's National Board of Revenue wants to end most value-added tax exemptions and apply a single 15 per cent rate by 2030, a proposal it put to the International Monetary Fund in Washington during talks over a new loan programme.

Two officials involved in the discussions said the revenue board handed the IMF's technical committee a tentative timeline and a list of targeted goods and services. A high-level IMF mission is expected in Dhaka in the first week of November to assess the plan alongside the country's wider financial position, they said.

The change would reach deep into everyday spending. More than 500 goods and services now pay reduced VAT of 2 to 10 per cent, or nothing at all, under three schedules of the VAT law and a series of statutory orders. They include electrical goods and home appliances, computers and their accessories, metro rail fares, restaurant meals, steel and aluminium, non-branded clothing, sanitary pads and baby nappies.

Under the proposal, those reduced rates would be allowed to lapse when their current terms end in June 2028 and June 2030, after which the items would fall under the standard 15 per cent. A 10 per cent concession for locally made lifts would be allowed to expire in 2030. The package system that lets small and medium businesses pay a lump sum in place of regular VAT would be scrapped, and the reduced rates on gas and electricity are under review.

The government has argued that essential items should be shielded. Exemptions are expected to stay for farm produce and agricultural inputs, and for rice, lentils, edible oil, salt and chillies, as well as public transport, basic education, general health care and life-saving medicines. Fifteen per cent is already the standard rate; the plan would make it the only rate for most of the goods that currently receive relief.

For everything left outside that protection, the pressure points upwards. A business that pays more VAT on its stock normally passes at least part of the increase to customers, and the effect would be sharpest on the goods that carry the lowest rates today. That is why officials describe the proposal as a revenue measure with a household cost.

The board has tried this before. A plan to introduce a single 15 per cent rate in 2015 was abandoned after opposition from the business community, and concerns remain that businesses will object again. The current push is tied to financing: under a $4.7 billion IMF programme approved in January 2023, Bangladesh promised reforms in revenue, banking and energy, and has fallen behind on several conditions. The NBR's latest report put VAT revenue forgone through exemptions and concessions above Tk 1.29 trillion in the 2022-23 fiscal year, equal to about 3.3 per cent of GDP, and more than the Tk 1.25 trillion the board actually collected in VAT that year.

"The IMF wants to know how Bangladesh plans to raise revenue and phase out tax exemptions. We have proposed gradually withdrawing VAT exemptions and introducing a single rate by 2030, with some exceptions," a senior VAT official told The Business Standard. A second official said the IMF wanted all exemptions removed, while the government insisted on keeping relief for essential goods, health care and education.

Economists are not convinced the timetable will hold. Zahid Hussain, a former lead economist at the World Bank's Dhaka office, questioned whether the IMF would be satisfied. "What assurance does the IMF have that the government will fulfil its commitments this time?" he said. He added that a programme agreed now would probably expire long before 2030, and that the government must show how much extra revenue the withdrawals would actually raise. He noted that total tax exemptions amount to roughly 6.8 per cent of GDP, against revenue collection of about 6.4 per cent.

Business groups are watching the rate itself. Fazlul Hoque, administrator of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, told TBS that a single rate is workable if it is set low. "A single VAT rate is possible, but the problem lies with the VAT rate itself. If the VAT rate is reduced and a uniform rate is introduced, there should be no major problem," he said.

Finance Minister Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, speaking at an IMF conference in Thailand, said some conditions are unavoidable when borrowing from the fund, and that consensus had been reached on key issues through negotiation.

Much is still open. There is no final list of goods and no cabinet decision, and no date has been set for the first step. It is not clear whether the IMF will accept a 2030 horizon that runs past the likely life of a new programme, or how hard businesses will push back. Nor is it known how much of any increase shops would absorb rather than pass on.

The next fixed point is the IMF mission's visit in early November. If the two sides agree, the changes would be written into budgets and tax measures over several years; the first reduced rates are not due to lapse until 2028, so most shoppers would feel the effect gradually, though the finance ministry could move sooner through budget decisions or new orders.