Which Licences Does a Business in Bangladesh Need? The Complete Checklist, Authority by Authority

In this guide: The three everyone needs · Premises and workers: DIFE, fire and environment · Product and sector licences · Trade licence: cancellation, transfer and change of address · What an inspector looks for, and what it costs to be without · Order of work for a new business

The short answer

Start with the three that every business needs and that the others depend on: the trade licence (our trade licence guide covers fees and renewal), the e-TIN, and the VAT registration or turnover enlistment (our BIN guide has the current thresholds). Then ask three questions. Do five or more workers do manufacturing on the premises? If so you are a factory under s.2(7) of the Labour Act and need DIFE’s layout approval and factory licence (our DIFE guide); if you employ workers without manufacturing, you need establishment registration from the same office. Is any part of the premises a warehouse or workshop, or is the building high-rise? Then the fire licence and, for high-rise, the fire NOC. What colour is your industry under the Environment Conservation Rules 2023? Green needs an environmental clearance; Yellow, Orange and Red need a location clearance first (our clearance guide). After that the list is product-driven: BSTI, drugs, boilers, explosives, bond, import and export, food (our product licences guide). Use the finder below for a first list, then read the guide for each item; the fees and timelines on each page are the authorities’ published figures with the ones we could not confirm marked as such.

The three everyone needs

The three are sequential in practice: the trade licence form asks for the TIN, the VAT office asks for the trade licence, and every licence below asks for all three. A new company therefore completes RJSC incorporation, TIN, trade licence and BIN in that order before approaching DIFE, the Fire Service or the Department of Environment.

Premises and workers: DIFE, fire and environment

DIFE. The Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments licenses two things. A factory, defined in s.2(7) of the Labour Act 2006 as premises where five or more workers ordinarily work and a manufacturing process is carried on, needs a notice to the Chief Inspector at least fifteen days before work starts (Form-75 under Rule 352), approval of the layout plan (Form-76) and the factory licence (Form-77), renewed every year. An establishment that employs workers without manufacturing (a shop, an office, a bank, a contracting agency) registers with the same office at a lower fee. The Dinajpur office’s citizen charter gives 45 days for layout approval and for the licence and 20 days for renewal; applications go through the LIMA portal. Fees run from a few hundred taka for the smallest shop to tens of thousands for the largest factory, by number of workers; the schedule is in the Labour Rules and we set out the reported figures, with the caution that we could not read the current gazette, in the DIFE guide. Fire. Under s.4 of the Fire Prevention and Extinction Act 2003 no building or place may be used as a warehouse or workshop without a licence from the Director General; s.6 makes it non-transferable; s.7 requires the Director General’s no-objection before the design of a multi-storey or commercial building is approved; s.17 punishes unlicensed use with imprisonment. The licence is annual, renewed in the thirty days before the financial year ends, with a surcharge of 5% of the fee per month of delay for up to six months and cancellation after that (2014 Rules). Environment. Section 12 of the Environment Conservation Act 1995 forbids establishing or operating an industrial unit or project without an environmental clearance certificate, and s.15 punishes it with two to five years’ imprisonment, a fine of Tk 1 lakh to Tk 5 lakh, or both. The 2023 Rules sort every activity into Green, Yellow, Orange or Red; Yellow and above need a location clearance before construction and utility connections, and nobody starts trial production without the ECC. Validity is five years for Green, two for Yellow and one for Orange and Red, with renewal applied for at least thirty days before expiry.

Product and sector licences

Beyond these sit the sector regulators whose permission is a licence in all but name: Bangladesh Bank for banks, finance companies and payment services; IDRA for insurers; BTRC for telecom and internet; the Ministry of Education and university authorities for institutions; the DGHS for clinics and diagnostic centres; BRTA for transport; the Ministry of Industries for industrial registration where a sector requires it; and the Bangladesh Economic Zones and EPZ authorities inside the zones, which issue many of the above themselves.

Trade licence: cancellation, transfer and change of address

Three things about the trade licence are asked more often than its fee. It cannot be transferred. The licence names a person or a company for one business at one address; when a business is sold, the buyer applies for a fresh licence (some zonal offices accept a change-of-ownership endorsement with a fee, which is a matter of local practice rather than the Schedule). Cancellation has no form of its own. The Local Government (City Corporation) Act 2009 and the Model Tax Schedule say how a licence is issued and renewed, not how it is surrendered; the practice is a written application to the zonal revenue or tax officer with the original licence, the applicant’s NID and TIN, the board resolution for a company, and evidence that arrears are cleared, and the receipt of that application is the evidence that the business has stopped for every later purpose (VAT deregistration, TIN deactivation, a loan file). We set the sequence out in our closing a business guide. A change of address or of business nature is an amendment on application to the same office, with the new tenancy deed and a fee; carrying on at the new address under the old licence is the most common finding in a city corporation inspection. Renewal itself is annual (five-year at Dhaka South), due at the start of the financial year, with surcharges on late renewal that vary by corporation.

What an inspector looks for, and what it costs to be without

Inspections are not coordinated between the authorities, so the question an owner should ask is not “who will come first” but “what is the renewal date of each licence and who holds the file”. Our practice for business clients is a single licence register with the authority, licence number, issue and expiry dates, fee, challan code and the officer’s name, reviewed each May before the June renewals. It is dull and it is the difference between a Tk 1,000 renewal and a sealed shop.

Order of work for a new business

For a trading company: RJSC incorporation, TIN, trade licence, bank account, BIN, IRC and ERC, DIFE establishment registration, fire licence if there is a warehouse. For a factory: incorporation, TIN, trade licence, bank account, BIN, then (before building or installing) the DoE location clearance, the DIFE layout approval, the Fire Service NOC if the building is multi-storey, then after construction the ECC, the fire licence, the factory licence, boiler registration, BSTI and the bond licence, then IRC and ERC. For a restaurant: incorporation or proprietorship, TIN, trade licence, BIN, DoE clearance (Yellow), fire licence, DIFE establishment registration, BFSA registration. Two timing points: the DIFE notice must go in fifteen days before work starts, and nothing should be built or connected before the location clearance. Fees are small next to the cost of a sealed premises; what costs money is sequencing them wrongly and waiting for one office while another expires.