The country’s largest revenue-collecting institution, Chittagong Custom House, collected a preliminary revenue of Tk 75,432 crore in the just-ended 2024-25 fiscal year. The revenue collection in the previous fiscal year was Tk 68,755 crore. Accordingly, the revenue growth rate stands at 9.71 percent.
Although the target of the Custom House for the current fiscal year was Tk 80,402 crore, the implementation is somewhat less, but the overall achievement is seen as positive by those concerned.
The Chittagong Custom House mainly collects duties, taxes and fines on goods imported and exported through the country’s main seaports. In addition, some revenue is also collected from other departments of the National Board of Revenue (NBR), which is not included in this calculation.
Customs authorities said that in addition to revenue collection, they perform various responsibilities including preventing smuggling, preventing customs evasion through false declarations, trade facilitation, industrialization, energy security, supply of essential goods, employment, and compliance with domestic and international laws.
The economy had to face multiple challenges in the outgoing fiscal year: political unrest in July, week-long internet outage, dollar crisis, severe floods, two Eid holidays, freight transport strikes, pen breaks, NBR shutdown, and various situations. Despite this, revenue growth of close to 10 percent is considered positive.
On the other hand, Chittagong Port also set a new record in container handling in the same fiscal year. A total of 3,296,067 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) of containers were handled at the port in the fiscal year 2024-25, which is 1,27,377 TEUs more than the previous year (4.02 percent growth).
There has also been significant progress in cargo handling. In the just-ended fiscal year, the total handling of open goods using the port was 137 million 24 thousand 783 metric tons. A total of 4 thousand 77 ships arrived at the port.
A leader of an organization related to the import-export business in Chittagong said that despite various obstacles throughout the fiscal year, this progress in revenue collection is hopeful. If political stability and a business-friendly environment are ensured, revenue collection will increase further in the future.
