The National Pay Commission 2025 has finalised its report, recommending over 100 per cent hike in pays for the government employees who are serving at lower levels in the 20-grade salary structure.

Officials said that pay hikes for officers serving between the grade-9 to the grade-1 were likely to be ranged between 75 per cent and over 54 per cent.

An employee of grade-20 receives Tk 8,250 and an officer of grade-1 receives Tk 78,000 as per previous pay hikes in 2015.

There is a recommendation to set the ratio between the highest and the lowest salaries at 1:8 from the current 1:9.

The commission calculated that Tk 70,000 crore to Tk 80,000 crore would be required for the full implementation of the recommendations.

Economists said that the implementation of the pay hikes would increase fiscal burdens and would also increase money supply to the market, pushing up the inflation rate which has been prevailing high over the past three years.

The pay commission led by former finance secretary Zakir Ahmed Khan is going to apprise finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed tomorrow afternoon over its recommendations at the secretariat in the capital Dhaka.

On the same day, both the finance adviser and the pay commission chairman will meet chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus to submit the report.

Officials said most of the recommendations of the current pay commission were going to be almost similar to those of the previous commission.

Former World Bank Dhaka office chief economist Zahid Hussain said that the implementation of the new pay scale was linked to affordability since it would escalate fiscal burden amid resource constraints and growing expenditures for interest payment.

The tenure of the interim government will expire after the national elections on February 12, shifting the implementation responsibility to the new elected government.

Among priorities of the new elected government payment for power subsidy and arrears will be more pressing, said Zahid, adding that the interim government often struggled to manage Tk 5000 crore and pay the power arrears.

The previous pay commission, headed by former Bangladesh Bank governor Mohammed Farashuddin, was appointed in November 2013.

The Awami League-led regime that was ousted in August 2024 amid a mass uprising implemented the major recommendations of the previous pay commission in two phases — salary hikes in July 2015 and other benefits in July 2016.

Centre for Policy Dialogue executive director Fahmida Khatun said that the public sector salaries saw an almost 100 per cent increase.

Economists said that the growth rate of salaries and allowances of the government employees would be higher than the prevailing inflation.

They said that the government had failed to ensure salary hikes in the private sector, matching with the pay hikes for the public sector over the past years.

The ‘White Paper on the State of the Bangladesh Economy’, which was submitted to the interim government in December 2024, criticised the 2015 pay hikes by almost 100 per cent, describing those as an attempt to appease the bureaucracy following the controversial 2014 Jatiya Sangsad elections.

The white paper, prepared by a team of economists led by Debapriya Bhattacharya under a policy of the interim government, noted that that the pay hikes, coupled with low revenue generation, had contributed to a growing public debt and rising interest payments on loans.

On November 9, 2025, the finance adviser said that the decision about the pay hike for the public servants would be made by the new elected government as the issue could not be settled by the interim administration.

The interim government has increased non-development budget allocation by Tk 22,000 crore in the revised budget for the 2025-26 financial year, so that the elected government can make partial implementation of the recommendations.

The commission, appointed on July 27, 2025, has been asked to submit its recommendations within six months after it starts its operation.

The pay commission that held its first meeting on August 14 is scheduled to complete its tenure on February 14, two days after the 13th Jatiya Sangsad elections scheduled for February 12.