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Internal Resources Division

division · verified (verified 2026-05-17)

Profile

Head
Md. Abdur Rahman Khan
Role
Secretary
Annual budget
—
Staff
—
Established
1979
Legal basis
Rules of Business 1996 (Schedule I); National Board of Revenue Order 1972 (President's Order No. 76 of 1972, establishing NBR under IRD); Constitution of Bangladesh, Article 93(1) (basis for Revenue Policy and Revenue Management Ordinance 2025 which nominally dissolved IRD but is not yet in effect)

IRD remains operational despite the Revenue Policy and Revenue Management Ordinance 2025 (as amended September 2025) nominally abolishing it and NBR; the effective gazette has not been issued; the organogram for the successor Revenue Policy Division and Revenue Management Division is stuck at the Ministry of Public Administration; a writ petition in the High Court challenging the ordinance is pending; the BNP government has not committed to fresh legislation to implement the bifurcation; tax-to-GDP at 6.8 percent and a record Tk 1 lakh crore nine-month shortfall sustain intense IMF pressure for reform.

Recent activity

Provenance & notes

IRD was established 21 April 1979 when the Ministry of Finance was reorganised; the division is the apex revenue policy body and the Secretary of IRD holds ex-officio chairmanship of the National Board of Revenue. The Revenue Policy and Revenue Management Ordinance 2025 (Article 93(1), promulgated 12 May 2025) nominally abolished both IRD and NBR, but requires a separate gazette notification to take legal effect; as of 23 April 2026 (Wikipedia last edit) and corroborated by multiple news sources through May 2026, that notification has not been issued and IRD remains operational. Md. Abdur Rahman Khan (FCMA; appointed 15 August 2024) is the sitting Secretary/NBR Chairman; he declined to comment on the stalled implementation (The Daily Star, 2025). The September 2, 2025 amendment addressed the core cadre dispute by opening the RPD secretary position to any cadre with macroeconomic or revenue expertise and requiring the RMD head to have revenue collection experience; this partially de-escalated the six-week pen-down strike but did not unblock the organogram approval at the Ministry of Public Administration. A writ petition (Jewel Azad, High Court bench of Justices Fatema Najib and Sikder Mahmudur Razi, filed 17 May 2025) challenging the ordinance's constitutionality under Articles 26, 31, and 29(1) remains pending. The BNP government has not announced fresh parliamentary legislation to advance the bifurcation. annual_budget_bdt is null: IRD's administrative budget as a division (distinct from the revenue it oversees) is not publicly itemised in available primary sources; the Tk 4,99,000 crore NBR collection target is a revenue target, not IRD's own operational budget. Verification based on 2+ primary sources for all factual claims.

Sources