National Parlament Election 2026

Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury unveiled a record Tk 9.38 lakh crore national budget for FY2026-27, outlining the government’s roadmap for economic recovery, investment growth and social development.

Presenting the budget in the Jatiya Sangsad during the second session of the 13th Parliament, the finance minister said the proposed budget aims to restore macroeconomic stability, accelerate investment and employment, expand social protection and move Bangladesh towards becoming a one-trillion-dollar economy by 2034.

The budget speech, titled “Journey Towards a Democratic, Humane and Inclusive Economy”, was delivered in the presence of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, while Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad Bir Bikram chaired the session.

“This budget has been formulated with a focus on economic stability, investment, production, employment generation and the establishment of an equitable society,” the finance minister told parliament.

The government has projected the country’s GDP at Tk 68.30 lakh crore for FY27 and set a growth target of 6.5 percent, while aiming to reduce inflation to 7.5 percent.

The proposed budget includes a revenue collection target of Tk 6.95 lakh crore, with the National Board of Revenue (NBR) expected to collect Tk 6.04 lakh crore.

The budget deficit has been estimated at Tk 2.43 lakh crore, equivalent to 3.6 percent of GDP.

Khosru said the government’s long-term goal is to transform Bangladesh into a one-trillion-dollar economy by 2034 through investment, productivity growth and employment generation.

The budget has been structured around ten strategic priorities, including quality education and healthcare, employment generation, private sector-led investment, social protection, energy security, infrastructure development, technological advancement and institutional reforms.

A major feature of the budget is the government’s “3R Strategy” for economic revival, consisting of Recovery and Stabilisation, Restoration and Reconstruction for Acceleration.

The finance minister said the strategy will be implemented in phases over the next one to five years to strengthen economic foundations and accelerate growth.

The budget places strong emphasis on private sector development, with plans to reduce dependence on debt-driven growth and encourage investment, production and job creation.

To improve the business environment, the government announced measures to modernise tax administration, expand digital services and simplify business regulations.

The budget also proposes significant increases in education and healthcare spending.

Healthcare allocation has been increased to Tk 69,409 crore, equivalent to 1.01 percent of GDP, compared with 0.58 percent in the outgoing fiscal year.

The government has also pledged to gradually increase spending on education and health to five percent of GDP in the coming years.

Social protection programmes will be expanded further under the FY27 budget. The government plans to strengthen initiatives such as the Family Card, Farmer Card and honorarium programmes for religious leaders.

Development expenditure has been proposed at Tk 3.16 lakh crore, with priority given to agriculture, energy security, information technology, transport infrastructure and employment generation.

The finance minister also announced plans to promote the Creative Economy, Sports Economy, Green Economy and Blue Economy as part of future development strategies.

In his speech, Khosru criticised the economic management of the previous administration, alleging that corruption, inefficiency and wealth concentration weakened the country’s economic foundations.

Concluding his speech, the finance minister called for cooperation from all sections of society to implement the government’s reform agenda and build a more inclusive and prosperous Bangladesh.

“Our commitment is to build a Bangladesh where equal opportunities are available to all, where enterprise and innovation are encouraged, and where the benefits of economic progress are shared by every citizen,” he said.

The buses come at night. Hands bound, eyes covered, men and women and children are walked to the edge of Indian territory and shoved across. No paperwork. No process. No accountability. Just bodies, deposited on Bangladeshi soil, and a border fence closing behind them.
This is what India’s Border Security Force has been doing along Bangladesh’s frontier and doing with greater frequency since the BJP swept West Bengal’s assembly elections. It is called a push-in. It is illegal under international law. And Delhi is not only aware of it; Delhi is directing it.
The evidence is not circumstantial. On June 5, India’s foreign ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal told reporters that all foreign nationals on Indian soil, Bangladeshis included, would be handled according to Indian law. That is a government spokesman, at a formal briefing, providing diplomatic cover for what its border force is doing in the dark. The BSF does not freelance operations of this scale. Someone gave the order.
What makes this particularly cynical is the timing. Bangladesh’s current government has extended genuine goodwill toward New Delhi since coming to power. Visa restrictions have eased. The temperature between the two capitals had been falling. India’s response has been to escalate push-ins.
This is not neighborly conduct. It is coercion.
The scale of it demands context. Last year, India pushed more than a thousand people across Bangladesh’s borders in a single wave; some blindfolded, some bound. Hidden among them were Rohingya refugees holding valid UNHCR registration cards. People India had no legal or moral authority to expel anywhere, let alone into a country already hosting over a million displaced Rohingya. No formal complaint was lodged with the UN refugee agency. The silence was noticed. The silence was noticed.
This time, Bangladesh’s Border Guard is holding the line. Local communities are standing night watch. Ansar and VDP units have reinforced frontier positions. Every documented push-in attempt in recent weeks has been turned back. The confrontations, some of them captured on video showing BGB officers facing down BSF personnel at the zero line, reflect something the previous government never demonstrated: a willingness to say no.
But resistance at the wire is not enough. Push-ins are not a border management problem that BGB can resolve alone. They are a political instrument, deployed by a government using its own Muslim minority population as a demographic weapon; labelling Indian Muslims as illegal Bangladeshis to satisfy a Hindu nationalist voter base, then literally expelling them across a sovereign border. The logic is as crude as it is dangerous. And it will not stop until Dhaka makes the cost of continuing it higher than the cost of stopping.
History offers a clear guide. In 2003, India attempted a mass push-in at Lalmonirhat. Bangladesh refused entry. The displaced people sat in no-man’s land for nearly two months. When Bangladesh’s foreign minister finally travelled to Delhi for talks, the people at the zero-line vanished before the first meeting began. India understood the message. It always does, when the message is delivered without apology.
Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s government must deliver that message now; not through back channels, not through West Bengal’s state government, not at the level of border commanders. State to state. Dhaka to Delhi. If a direct call between Prime Minister Rahman and Prime Minister Modi is what it takes, then that call should happen.
The demand is not complicated. Stop the push-ins. Provide guarantees they will not resume. And understand that Bangladesh, unlike its previous government, will not absorb this in silence.
For fifteen years, the Sheikh Hasina administration turned strategic submission to India into something approaching official policy and received, in exchange, deepening dependency and diminishing respect. That chapter is closed. Bangladesh is a sovereign country with a government that was voted in, not installed, and it does not need New Delhi’s permission to defend its own borders.
India is a large neighbor. It is not a supervisor. The sooner that distinction is understood on both sides of the frontier, the better the relationship between these two countries will actually become.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman has stressed the need for future UN peacekeeping missions to be more modern, visionary and technology-driven, saying the government is gradually modernising the armed forces and police for international assignments.

“The government is gradually implementing initiatives to modernise the armed forces and police to prepare them for performing responsibilities in United Nations peacekeeping missions and other international assignments,” he said.

The Prime Minister made the remarks while addressing a programme at Senakunja in Dhaka Cantonment marking the International Day of UN Peacekeepers.

Paying tribute to fallen peacekeepers, Tarique Rahman said 175 Bangladeshi peacekeepers have sacrificed their lives since 1988 while serving in UN missions, while many others were injured.

He said their sacrifices remain a shining example for Bangladesh and peace-loving people around the world.

“Their sacrifice demonstrates their commitment not only to defending the independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh but also to protecting peace anywhere in the world under the UN flag,” he said.

The Prime Minister noted that Bangladesh’s achievements in peacekeeping were earned through dedication and sacrifice in difficult environments.

He praised Bangladeshi peacekeepers for their professionalism, courage and commitment while serving far from their families.

At the programme, a documentary on Bangladesh’s contributions to UN peacekeeping missions was screened, and commemorative crests were handed over to the families of martyred peacekeepers and injured personnel.

Tarique Rahman said more than 200,000 members of Bangladesh’s armed forces and police have served in around 63 UN peacekeeping missions across 43 countries.

Currently, about 5,860 Bangladeshi peacekeepers are serving in 10 missions worldwide, while preparations are underway for participation in a new mission in Haiti, he added.

The Prime Minister said around 11 percent of Bangladesh’s peacekeepers are women who are serving alongside their male counterparts in conflict-affected regions.

Describing the armed forces as a symbol of national independence, dignity and courage, he said Bangladesh’s military has earned international recognition over nearly four decades of peacekeeping service.

Referring to emerging global challenges, Tarique Rahman said peacekeeping operations are becoming increasingly complex due to changing geopolitical realities and technological advancements.

“In addition to conventional warfare, cyber warfare, misuse of artificial intelligence, media disinformation and climate-related security threats have emerged as new challenges to global peace,” he said.

He said Bangladesh remains committed to the principles of world peace, international coexistence, justice and respect for the UN Charter.

The Prime Minister expressed hope that Bangladeshi peacekeepers would continue to uphold the country’s reputation through professionalism and dedication in future international missions.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaed Islam, Prime Minister’s Defence Adviser Brigadier General (Retd.) Dr AKM Shamsul Islam and Chief of Army Staff General Waker-Uz-Zaman also spoke at the programme.

Cabinet members, senior military officials and diplomats from different countries attended the event.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman informed Parliament that the government has taken an initiative to launch the ‘e-Health Card’ programme on a pilot basis in five districts within 180 days of assuming office.

Replying to a starred question from ruling party lawmaker Md Shamsur Rahman Simul Biswas in the Jatiya Sangsad, the Prime Minister said a project for the programme is awaiting approval.

Under the pilot phase, e-Health Card services will be introduced in Khulna, Noakhali, Bogura, Sirajganj and Narsingdi.

He said the e-Health Card will be linked with the Electronic Referral System and the Electronic Patient Management System to improve healthcare services.

Highlighting the government’s progress under its 180-day action plan, Tarique Rahman said Family Cards have already been distributed to 60,044 families in 36 units under the pilot phase of the programme for women heads of households.

He said 20,748 farmers have also received Farmer Cards under a pre-pilot programme covering 11 agricultural blocks in 11 upazilas across 10 districts.

The Prime Minister noted that agricultural loans of up to Tk 10,000 in the crop, livestock and fisheries sectors have been waived as part of the government’s election commitments.

He also said monthly honorariums are currently being provided to religious leaders serving at 4,908 mosques, 990 temples, 144 Buddhist monasteries and pagodas and 396 churches. The government plans to gradually extend the benefit to all places of worship.

Tarique Rahman said excavation and re-excavation work is underway on 666 canals with a total length of 965.04 kilometres under the Ministry of Water Resources, Local Government Division, Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief.

As part of the government’s afforestation programme, around 3.14 crore saplings will be planted during the upcoming monsoon season under the target of planting 25 crore trees nationwide.

The Prime Minister said the government plans to distribute free school uniforms to 200,000 students in government primary schools during the next fiscal year.

He also announced the gradual implementation of the “One Teacher One Tab” programme in schools.

In the education sector, he said the unsecured loan limit for language student visas has been increased from Tk 3 lakh to Tk 10 lakh. Loan disbursement for students going to Japan has also been simplified based on the Certificate of Eligibility before visa issuance.

To achieve the target of generating 20 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2030, he said 35 megawatts of electricity has already been added to the national grid through rooftop solar systems and net metering.

The Prime Minister further said the Ministry of Youth and Sports has launched the “Notun Kuri Sports-2026” programme to identify sporting talent among children aged between 12 and 14.

The initiative covers eight disciplines — football, cricket, kabaddi, athletics, badminton, chess, swimming and martial arts.

The government has launched a major infrastructure initiative in Jungle Salimpur of Sitakunda upazila in Chattogram to bring the long-neglected area under full administrative control and improve connectivity.

As part of the project, the Bangladesh Army’s 34 Construction Brigade started construction work on four roads last Thursday under high-level government directives.

The development was disclosed by Lt Col Md Kamrul Al Masud, Commander of the 26 Engineer Construction Battalion (ECB), at a views-exchange meeting.

The planned road network includes routes from Chhinnamul to Alinagar High School, Alinagar to the Dhaka-Chattogram Highway, and Alinagar through the BMA area to the Chattogram-Khagrachhari Highway. An internal road network will also be developed within the locality.

Officials said the 3,100-acre area had remained largely outside effective state control for years due to the activities of armed criminal groups, which hampered movement and development activities.

The current initiative follows a government decision to restore law and order and ensure administrative access to the area.

The project is being implemented by the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) under the Direct Procurement Method (DPM).

In addition to roads, the project includes the construction of bridges, culverts, drainage systems and retaining walls.

Officials expect the work to be completed within six to seven months.

Law enforcement agencies, including the Bangladesh Army, police, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), are jointly providing security during project implementation.

Local residents welcomed the initiative, saying the new roads would improve access to schools, healthcare facilities and markets, while creating new opportunities for trade and economic development in the area.

The Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase (CCGP) has approved a proposal for Bangladesh Television (BTV) to acquire the all-media broadcasting rights for the FIFA World Cup 2026 directly from FIFA.

The approval came at the 25th meeting of the CCGP this year, held at the Bangladesh Secretariat with Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury in the chair.

According to official sources, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting placed the proposal before the committee seeking approval to procure the media rights from FIFA through the Direct Procurement Method (DPM).

The total contract value for acquiring the rights has been fixed at Tk 72.71 crore.

Under the proposal, BTV will obtain the all-media rights for the FIFA World Cup 2026, allowing the state-owned broadcaster to provide comprehensive coverage of the tournament across multiple broadcasting platforms.

Officials said the committee reviewed the technical and financial aspects of the proposal before recommending it for approval.

The procurement will be carried out directly with FIFA, the governing body of world football and organiser of the FIFA World Cup.

The initiative is aimed at ensuring that football fans across Bangladesh can access live matches and related World Cup programming through public broadcasting services.

Once the agreement is finalised, viewers nationwide will be able to enjoy coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2026 through BTV.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman has thanked the law, justice and parliamentary affairs minister and the home minister for identifying and bringing the accused in the Ramisa murder case under the law.

According to a press release issued by the Parliament Secretariat, the Prime Minister made the remarks at a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee held at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban.

During the meeting, Tarique Rahman praised the role of the relevant ministries and law enforcement agencies in swiftly identifying, arresting and bringing to justice those involved in the murder of Ramisa Akter, an eight-year-old student of Popular Model High School in Pallabi.

The Prime Minister said the quick investigation and arrest of the suspects in such a brutal and heartbreaking case reflected the government’s firm commitment to maintaining law and order.

He expressed hope that the judicial process would be completed swiftly and fairly and that those convicted would receive appropriate punishment under the law.

Tarique Rahman also called on law enforcement agencies, investigators and all concerned officials to continue demonstrating the same level of professionalism and dedication in ensuring public safety.

Members present at the meeting also appreciated the prompt actions taken by the authorities in the case.

The Prime Minister further expressed hope that the government’s policy of zero tolerance against crime would continue in the future.

A Chinese delegation visited several locations in Companiganj upazila of Sylhet to inspect potential sites for a proposed 1,000-bed hospital.

The delegation arrived in Sylhet to assess possible locations and examine the feasibility of the project, which is expected to significantly improve healthcare services in the region if implemented.

Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Ariful Haque Chowdhury accompanied the delegation during the visit.

The team visited the Sadapathor tourist spot, Sylhet Hi-Tech Park and several other locations to conduct a preliminary assessment of their suitability for the proposed hospital.

Sylhet Deputy Commissioner Md Sarwar Alam and other senior local administration officials were also present.

Speaking to journalists after the visit, the minister said the formal process of selecting a site for the hospital has already begun.

“China will provide full financing for the project and discussions with Chinese investors on site selection and preliminary planning are continuing,” he said.

Ariful Haque Chowdhury expressed optimism that the project would bring major improvements to healthcare services in Sylhet and surrounding areas.

“Once implemented, the project will have a positive impact on healthcare services in this region. People of Sylhet will no longer have to depend on Dhaka for advanced medical treatment,” he said.

Speaking on behalf of the Chinese delegation, Steward Cheung, Chairman of Bai Up Investment Limited, said they were encouraged by the initial site inspections and feasibility assessment.

“Considering Sylhet’s geographical location and the growing demand for quality healthcare services, the project appears highly promising,” he said, adding that efforts would be made to ensure financing for the initiative.

Earlier, the expatriates’ welfare minister held a meeting with the Chinese investors at the Sylhet Circuit House, where both sides discussed the proposed hospital’s location, scope and investment structure.

The two sides agreed to work together to accelerate the implementation process of the project.

Following the August 2024 political transition in Bangladesh, a systematic conspiratorial discourse has gained circulation in certain media and political quarters, claiming that the downfall of the Sheikh Hasina government was not the result of a mass sociopolitical upheaval but of institutional manipulation by a small group of officials. This article offers a critical analysis of the internal logic, evidentiary basis, and political function of this narrative. Drawing on established paradigms of mass mobilization theory, institutional analysis, and media criticism, it argues that these revisionist framings are fundamentally inaccurate in their portrayal of the magnitude, authenticity, and historical course of the July Movement, and that they serve discernible partisan interests. The article further contextualizes this phenomenon within a broader pattern of post-authoritarian narrative reconstruction observable in comparative political settings.
Political transitions of significant magnitude seldom escape the gravitational force of conspiratorial reinterpretation. When established regimes fall particularly those that had invested considerable effort in projecting an image of stability and permanence the impulse among their remaining supporters to locate causation in betrayal, external interference, or elite manipulation rather than in popular rejection is both psychologically understandable and politically expedient. Bangladesh’s August 2024 transition is no exception.
What is now commonly referred to as the July Movement reached its culmination on 5 August 2024 with the departure of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, bringing to an end more than fifteen years of Awami League governance. Within weeks, a conspiratorial counter-narrative began spreading through sympathetic media outlets and political networks, asserting that the transition was not the product of genuine mass mobilization but the contrived outcome of a highly coordinated institutional conspiracy. This article subjects that narrative to rigorous critical examination.
The narrative under examination rests on several interlocking claims. At its center is the assertion that Sheikh Hasina’s political downfall was not caused by public anger over electoral manipulation, democratic erosion, and systemic corruption, but by a small, strategically placed group of officials who allegedly isolated her from political reality and organized her removal from within.
Central to this framing is the so-called “Chattogram nexus” an allegedly unified bloc of senior officials said to have concentrated influence around the Prime Minister in the period leading up to and following the 2024 general election. The individuals named within this structure include Principal Secretary Mohammad Kaykobad, NSI Director General Major General Mohammad Hossain Al Morshed, DGFI Director General Major General Hamidul Haque, Military Secretary Major General Kabir Ahmed, and Press Secretary Naimul Islam Khan. The narrative further claims that Sheikh Hasina, under the influence of her sister Sheikh Rehana and businessman Salman F Rahman, became excessively reliant on the Army Chief and the heads of key intelligence institutions, bypassing broader party consultation and political leadership structures.
The logical extension of this framing is to recast the quota reform movement the immediate catalyst for the July Movement not as an organic student mobilization with deep structural roots, but as a manipulated trigger that could have been neutralized through ordinary political engagement, had the Prime Minister not been insulated from political reality by those around her.
This narrative found direct expression in a report titled Bangladesh’s Unmasking Part 7, authored by Enayet Kabir widely identified as a former Awami League activist and published by the Indian media outlet Northeast News, an outlet that has drawn sustained criticism for promoting narratives hostile to the Bangladesh military while remaining consistently favorable toward the Awami League.
The role of specific media platforms in amplifying and legitimizing this narrative merits independent scrutiny. Northeast News, along with several aligned outlets, has demonstrated a consistent editorial pattern: portraying Bangladesh’s military as an institution primarily oriented toward protecting the Awami League rather than fulfilling its constitutional mandate in relation to the state, its sovereignty, and the people.
This framing carries significant analytical implications. By casting the military as a regime-protection apparatus rather than a state institution, such outlets simultaneously undermine any legitimate institutional role in the transition and create the interpretive conditions necessary for the conspiracy narrative to function. If the military’s institutional identity is defined solely by its relationship to the Awami League, then any divergence from Awami League interests becomes reframeable as betrayal or covert manipulation rather than the exercise of institutional integrity.
This reflects not incidental editorializing but a deliberate narrative architecture in which the factual record of the July Movement the breadth of participation, the documented use of state force against demonstrators, the organic expansion of the movement across social sectors is systematically subordinated to a scripted account of elite betrayal. Certain propagandists played a visibly biased role, overlooking both the state’s fundamental institutional dynamics and the intensity of mass political mobilization driven by accumulated anger against the Awami League regime.
The conspiratorial narrative’s most consequential analytical failure lies in its treatment or more precisely, its erasure of the public as a political actor.
The July Movement was not a narrow institutional event. It was a mass sociopolitical mobilization of extraordinary scale, involving university students, professionals, urban workers, and ordinary citizens across Bangladesh. The movement’s trajectory followed the recognizable pattern of authentic popular mobilization: it originated in a specific policy grievance the quota reform debate and expanded progressively as it resonated with pre-existing and widely shared frustrations regarding governance quality, democratic regression, and the abuse of state power.
This expansion is analytically decisive. Genuine mass movements grow through resonance, not through external orchestration. The broadening of the July Movement’s participation base across social sectors and geographic regions reflects a convergence of shared political experience rather than coordinated manipulation. To attribute this convergence to a hidden elite network is not political analysis it is the systematic denial of agency to millions of participants.
Political participation under conditions of authoritarian constraint carries substantial personal cost. Participants in the July Movement faced legal exposure, economic consequences, and acute physical danger, given the documented deployment of state force against demonstrators. The decision to participate under such conditions is not the product of external instruction. It is a response to perceived injustice one that mass movements across history have repeatedly demonstrated cannot be manufactured from outside.
Beyond the question of public agency, the conspiracy narrative also founders on the structural realities of how modern states function.
The claim that a small circle of officials however strategically positioned could collectively isolate a sitting prime minister from political reality and engineer a regime transition through covert coordination presupposes a degree of institutional linearity that does not reflect how governance actually operates. Modern state institutions, including military and intelligence agencies, function within constitutional, bureaucratic, and political constraints. While individuals may exert influence within their domains, they cannot unilaterally override the accumulated dynamics of national political life.
The Awami League’s political difficulties in 2024 were not sudden or manufactured. They were the product of a prolonged accumulation of structural fault lines: extensively documented concerns about electoral engineering, systemic corruption allegations, and the sustained use of force to constrain political opposition. These are matters of public record, documented by domestic civil society, international human rights organizations, and foreign governments. A conspiracy narrative that requires these structural realities to be set aside in favor of a story about personal miscalculation and elite betrayal is not engaging with the historical record it is evading it.
Narratives of this kind rarely emerge without purpose. By relocating causation from structural governance failures and mass public mobilization to elite conspiracy and institutional betrayal, the story being told here serves to rehabilitate the political record of the Awami League government while simultaneously casting doubt on the legitimacy of the July Movement and the transition it produced.
Post-authoritarian narrative reconstruction is not an unusual phenomenon. What distinguishes the Bangladeshi case is the speed and visibility with which this reconstruction has been attempted, and the specific media infrastructure through which it is being advanced.
The events of August 2024 cannot be meaningfully understood outside the broader course of governance, legitimacy, and public trust that preceded them. What this conspiratorial narrative ultimately fails to account for is the most consequential actor in the entire episode the public itself.

In the congested streets of Dhaka, daily commuting has become increasingly difficult due to heavy traffic and parking challenges. The recent fuel crisis, triggered by the ongoing conflict involving the United States, Israel  and Iran, has further worsened the situation, pushing many vehicle owners to look for alternative transport options.

Mohammad Emrul Kayes, a Supreme Court lawyer, recently purchased an electric motorcycle (e-bike) from Runner Motors Limited. He said the decision was not meant to replace his car or petrol-run bike but to solve everyday problems related to fuel availability.

“For me, it was about avoiding the hassle of long queues at fuel stations,” he said, adding that uncertainty around refueling pushed him toward a more convenient solution.

He described the e-bike as “quick, simple, and stress-free,” reflecting a growing shift in urban mobility during the crisis.

Industry data shows a sharp rise in e-bike sales since the fuel shortage began. Monthly sales increased from around 800–1,000 units to nearly 2,200 units in March—more than double the usual figure. If the trend continues, sales could reach 3,000 units, according to market insiders.

Several companies, including Walton, PRAN-RFL Group, and Runner, are expanding their presence in the growing electric vehicle (EV) market.

Nazrul Islam, managing director of Runner Group, emphasized the importance of shifting away from fossil fuels. He said e-bikes offer clear advantages, including lower operating and maintenance costs.

Runner currently offers 12 models of Yadea-branded e-bikes, priced between Tk 90,000 and Tk 315,000. Islam noted that households using solar power can operate these vehicles at minimal cost compared to fuel-based alternatives.

He also explained that e-bikes have simpler structures, using only a motor and battery, which reduces maintenance needs significantly.

Despite the benefits, adoption remains relatively low, with annual sales ranging from 12,000 to 16,000 units—just 2 to 3 percent of the overall motorcycle market.

Concerns about charging infrastructure, battery life, and travel range still exist. However, industry leaders say these issues are gradually improving. Charging an e-bike costs around Tk 14–15 and can be done overnight, similar to charging a mobile phone.

At Walton, sales of TAKYON e-bikes surged by up to 85 percent during the March fuel shortage, said Md Touhidur Rahman Rad, chief business officer of Walton Digi-Tech Industries Limited.

He added that e-bikes can travel between 80 and 130 kilometers on a single charge, depending on the model.

Meanwhile, Kamruzzaman Kamal of PRAN-RFL Group said sales of their RYDO e-bikes rose by about 60 percent during the crisis. He highlighted the need for supportive policies, noting that high import duties on parts increase production costs, while cheaper imported finished products create pricing challenges.

He also stressed the importance of developing charging infrastructure to support wider adoption.

As fuel uncertainty continues, e-bikes are emerging as a practical and cost-effective solution for urban transport in Bangladesh.

Source: The Daily Star