Doing Business in Bangladesh

Six Stages, and the One You Skip Is the Expensive One

Establishing and running a business here is a sequence, not a checklist. Each stage assumes the one before it, and the decisions that cost most are taken earliest.

Where to Begin

An orientation for a business deciding whether and how to operate in Bangladesh, written by people who work these decisions rather than summarise them.

It sets out the sequence and names what each stage turns on. It does not give timelines, fee schedules or thresholds, because those move and because the answer in any real case turns on facts this page does not have.

Where a stage raises a question worth an answer, the capability that handles it is linked beside it.

From Entry to Exit

Numbered because they run in this order. A business cannot import before it exists, or defend a position it has not yet taken.

01
Decide

Whether, and in what form

The question before any filing is what the business actually needs to do here: sell, source, manufacture, or hold an interest. That answer sets the entity form, and the entity form sets almost everything after it.
- Regulatory, Investment & Business Advisory
02
Establish

Entity, approvals and licences

Registration, BIDA, and BEZA or BEPZA where the operation sits in a zone; trade licensing; IRC and ERC for import and export. These run in sequence and each step assumes the one before it, so the order they are taken in sets the timeline.
- Regulatory, Investment & Business Advisory
03
Import

Machinery, inputs and goods

Classification and valuation decide landed cost; concessionary treatment for capital machinery is settled before the plant produces anything; a bonded operation is administered continuously rather than licensed once.
- Customs, Trade & Import Advisory
- Capital Machinery Import Advisory
04
Operate

The recurring obligations

VAT registration and deduction at source, corporate tax and withholding, and the reconciliations that hold or fail when they are examined. Exposure here accumulates quietly rather than arriving as an event.
- VAT & Indirect Tax Advisory
- Corporate Tax & Fiscal Advisory
05
Defend

When a position is questioned

A show cause notice, an audit finding or a valuation query escalates on its own timetable. Sequencing the response matters as much as the technical argument, because detention and demurrage accrue while it is made.
- Disputes, Appeals & Regulatory Proceedings
06
Plan

Repatriation, growth and exit

How profit, management fees and licence payments leave the country is settled by the structure and the agreements signed at the start — which is why the last stage belongs in the first conversation.
- CFO & Commercial Advisory
- Corporate Tax & Fiscal Advisory