New Pay Structure For Govt Officials To Reach Cabinet Soon

The government is finalising the proposed new pay structure for public sector employees and will place it before the Cabinet soon, Finance and Planning Minister Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury said on Wednesday.

He said the government would issue the official gazette notification shortly after the Cabinet approves the proposal.

The minister made the remarks at the Secretariat when asked about the progress of the proposed Ninth Pay Commission.

On 21 April, the government formed a 10-member committee headed by Cabinet Secretary Nasimul Ghani to recommend measures for implementing the new pay structure.

Sources in the Finance Division said the committee has nearly finalised its recommendations.

The committee comprises the Principal Secretary to the prime minister, Finance Secretary, Public Administration Secretary, Law Secretary, Defence Secretary, Secondary and Higher Education Secretary, Health Services Secretary, Principal Staff Officer of the Armed Forces Division and Comptroller General of Accounts, along with the cabinet secretary.

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation visited Dhaka from 12 to 16 July and held meetings with the finance minister and other senior officials.

During the visit, the IMF advised the government to strengthen revenue collection and sought information about the Family Card programme and the sources of financing for the proposed new pay structure.

Bangladesh's $5.5 billion IMF loan programme, approved in January 2023 and structured for disbursement in seven instalments, has so far resulted in five instalments being released.

Bangladesh and the IMF are now discussing a new loan programme worth more than $4 billion. The discussions are expected to continue during the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings in Washington in October.

Asked whether implementing the new pay structure could affect Bangladesh's prospects of securing the new IMF loan, Amir Khasru said there was no connection between the two issues.

"The IMF loan has no connection with the new pay structure. Work is continuing. We will introduce the new pay structure, and issuing the gazette notification will not take much longer," he said.

The minister also said he did not want to comment on the issue repeatedly.

"Different media outlets are reporting the issue in different ways. Let them. I will speak about it once," he said.

A senior Finance Division official said the IMF had made no direct comment on whether Bangladesh should implement the new pay structure, as the organisation had no mandate to do so.

Instead, the IMF sought clarification on how the government planned to finance the measure and advised it to strengthen revenue collection if the new pay structure was implemented, the official said.

Ninth Pay Commission recommendations

Nearly 12 years after the Eighth Pay Commission, the interim government formed the 23-member Ninth National Pay Commission on 27 July 2025.

The commission submitted its report to then Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus on 21 January this year. Former Finance Secretary Zakir Ahmed Khan chaired the commission.

The commission recommended retaining the existing 20 pay grades while increasing salaries and allowances by between 100% and 140%.

It proposed raising the minimum basic salary from Tk 8,250 to Tk 20,000 and the highest basic salary from Tk 78,000 to Tk 160,000.

The commission estimated that the government currently spends Tk 1.31 trillion on about 1.4 million public sector employees and 900,000 pensioners.

It projected an additional Tk 1.06 trillion would be required to implement the proposed pay structure.

The implementation committee initially proposed introducing the new pay structure over three financial years before revising the plan to two years.

Under the revised plan, the committee agreed to implement the increased basic salaries in the current financial year and the revised allowances in the following financial year.

Meanwhile, while presenting the national budget in Parliament on 11 June, the finance adviser announced that the government would begin implementing the new pay structure for public sector employees from 1 July.

He said public employees had been receiving salaries and allowances under the same structure for nearly 11 years, while rising inflation had significantly increased living costs.

The proposed budget for the 2026–27 financial year allocated Tk 898.36 billion for salaries and allowances of government officials and employees.

The allocation is only marginally higher than the revised allocation for the 2025–26 financial year.

Under the "Net Public Administration" sector in the use-of-resources section of the operational and development budget, Tk 1.41434 trillion was allocated, an increase of Tk 545.72 billion over the revised allocation for the current financial year.

Finance Division officials said at least Tk 440 billion of the additional allocation had been earmarked for public sector employees, teachers under the Monthly Pay Order (MPO) scheme and pensioners.