The National Editors Council (NEC) has rejected the government’s latest increase in advertisement rates for newspapers as inadequate, warning that the proposed revision would fail to address rising publishing costs and could threaten the newspaper industry’s survival.
The council has demanded a 100 per cent increase in government advertisement rates, instead of the 22-25 per cent rise announced by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and called for the rates to reflect the industry’s current operating expenses.
In a joint statement issued on Sunday, NEC President Shafik Rehman, editor of Jaijaydin, and General Secretary Mahmudur Rahman, editor of Amar Desh, described the revised rates as unacceptable and urged the government to reconsider them.
The ministry recently issued a circular revising government advertisement tariffs for national and regional newspapers.
The new rates, announced on 13 October, were significantly lower than those proposed by newspaper industry representatives during discussions with the interim government.
The council said the existing tariff structure dated back to October 2019, although the rates had originally been proposed in 2006.
They were implemented only 13 years later and had not been adjusted since, despite substantial increases in the cost of publishing.
Newsprint, printing ink and other essential materials have become considerably more expensive over the years, while the government has also revised its employees’ pay scales several times.
However, newspaper advertising rates have not kept pace with these rising costs, the statement said.
During the interim government’s tenure, several meetings took place between the then information adviser and representatives of journalists’ organisations, editors and senior journalists to discuss a revision of the rates.
At those meetings, newspaper industry representatives proposed a minimum rate of Tk900 and a maximum of Tk3,000 per column inch for government advertisements.
The rates set out in the latest circular fall well short of those proposals, the NEC said.
It described the proposed increase of 22-25 per cent, depending on the newspaper, as unrealistic given the industry’s current financial pressures.
The council urged the government to raise government advertisement rates by 100 per cent to help newspapers cope with rising operational expenses and ensure their sustainability.
It also called for existing additional charges for colour advertisements and advertisements appearing on the front and back pages to remain unchanged, even if the government could not increase those surcharges.
The NEC said the government needed to take the industry’s financial realities into account when setting advertisement rates, arguing that the latest revision would not adequately address the widening gap between publishing costs and advertising revenue.