← Government Watch

Bangladesh Rural Development Board

department · partial (verified 2026-05-17)

Profile

Head
Sarder Md Keramat Ali
Role
Director General
Annual budget
—
Staff
—
Established
1982
Legal basis
Established under Presidential Order No. 56 of 1982, transforming the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP, launched 1972) based on the Comilla Model into a statutory board; the IRDP itself was established under the Rural Development Ordinance, 1961 as adapted post-Liberation. BRDB operates as a statutory body under the Rural Development and Co-operatives Division.

BRDB is engaged on three concurrent fronts as of May 2026: (1) a structural reform proposal by Adviser Asif Mahmud to upgrade BRDB from a Board to a Directorate is under consideration, aimed at improving rural service delivery and filling chronic staff vacancies; (2) an April 2026 recruitment circular for 110 posts was issued to address staffing gaps across district and upazila offices; and (3) core operations continue -- microcredit disbursement to cooperatives, village development activities, and maintenance of 5.3 million active beneficiaries enrolled in BRDB's KSS farmer cooperatives and landless group programmes.

Recent activity

Provenance & notes

BRDB was established in 1982 by transforming the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP, launched 1972 based on the Comilla Model of Dr Akhter Hameed Khan). Wikipedia confirms established year 1982 and DG Sarder Md Keramat Ali; Banglapedia (Microcredit article) confirms BRDB as 'the largest public sector agency in the field of microcredit and social mobilisation in Bangladesh' with approximately 500,000 members through group-based microcredit, and Tk 837.5 million distributed in FY2009-10 at 94% loan recovery rate. Banglapedia (Co-operative Movement article) confirms 65,002 KSS farmer cooperatives and 34,395 landless cooperatives registered under BRDB as of 1995, of which 21,554 were women's cooperatives. The presidential order legal basis (P.O. No. 56 of 1982) is widely cited in secondary literature but could not be directly verified from bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd (site connection failed during verification); marked accordingly. The BRDB official website (brdb.gov.bd) returned SSL certificate errors and could not be fetched directly; website URL confirmed from Teletalk portal (www.brdb.gov.bd listed as BRDB's official site). head_since is null because appointment date for Sarder Md Keramat Ali is not available in accessible sources. staff_count is null: no publicly accessible figure found in 2025-26 documents; BRDB has historically carried significant vacant positions (noted in the Adviser's February 2026 directive). annual_budget_bdt is null: no disaggregated BRDB budget line found in accessible FY2025-26 budget materials. The 5.3 million beneficiaries figure and the April 15 2026 recruitment circular for 110 posts were provided in the task brief; the Teletalk portal confirms BRDB uses that platform for recruitment but the specific April 2026 circular page was not directly accessible; these figures are included with verification_status='partial'. The UNB article on the directorate upgrade was accessible as a headline from a search result but the full article body was not retrievable (article URL returned only navigation); the date is estimated as early February 2026 based on UNB search listing. Teletalk March 2025 circulars (refs 2953 and 2954) are confirmed from the Teletalk BRDB portal listing.

Sources