For an economy seeking to expand its manufacturing base and global export footprint, Bangladesh's main maritime gateway remains bogged down by significant service delays that drive up import costs and, ultimately, consumer prices.
The latest data from Chattogram Customs' Time Release Study (TRS) show that cargo clearance at Chattogram Port takes an average of 11 days and six hours.
The clearance period imposes significant costs on businesses. After a four-day free period, importers pay $6.90 per TEU daily for the first seven days, totalling $48.30 (Tk5,965) over an 11-day clearance period. Including 15% VAT, the charge rises to Tk6,860.
A document prepared for the signing of the deal with DP World for the New Mooring Container Terminal estimates that port inefficiency costs around Tk30,000 crore annually.
Mohiuddin Chowdhury, a finance professor at the University of Chittagong, said importers often pass on the additional costs arising from customs delays to consumers by incorporating them into product prices, adding to inflationary pressure.
Businesses said the impact extends beyond port storage fees. Prolonged delays tie up valuable working capital, postpone access to essential imported raw materials and machinery, and increase exposure to mounting shipping-related costs.
Yasir Arafat, an importer, said, "The delay not only adds port demurrage, it costs us interest on bank loans every day."
Who accounts for the 11 days?
The study found that importers and customs brokers account for 75% of cargo clearance time, followed by the Chattogram Port Authority (14%), Customs House administration (8%), other government agencies (2%) and shipping agents (1%).
The study attributes this pre-filing delay to commercial documentation, communication between importers and clearing and forwarding (C&F) agents, and obtaining Letters of Indemnity. The remaining 5.8 days are spent on post-arrival processing and release.
The delays have significant implications, as Chattogram Customs handles around 85% of Bangladesh's trade and contributes about 20% of revenue. Its collections rose from Tk6,415 crore in FY99 to Tk81,471 crore in FY26, up from Tk76,143 crore in the previous fiscal year.
The Customs House processes an average of 2,205 import Bills of Entry daily, collecting around Tk223 crore in revenue. Chattogram Port handles about 3.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers annually and directly serves 6,000-7,000 people a day.
Who is to blame
The customs' study suggests that the delay is not simply because of Customs assessment. A substantial part of the clearance period elapses before Customs can formally assess a shipment.
Machinery imports, for example, take an average of 13.3 days to clear, compared with 11.6 days for commercial goods such as toys and 11.1 days for food products.
Of those 13.3 days, machinery imports spend 7.5 days between the submission of the Import General Manifest (IGM) and the filing of the Bill of Entry. This means more than 56% of the clearance cycle elapses before the customs declaration is formally submitted.
Customs agents say the 11-day-and-six-hour clearance period cited in the study is calculated from the submission of the Import General Manifest (IGM), which is filed by shipping agents before a vessel enters Bangladesh's territorial waters.
The IGM declares the cargo carried by the vessel. Customs agents, however, submit the Bill of Entry after the vessel is berthed at the port, and they argue that the clearance-time calculation should begin from that point.
They allege that Customs is using the IGM submission date to shift responsibility for delays caused by its own processes onto customs agents and importers.
Md Showkat Ali, general secretary of the Chattogram Customs Agents Association, said clearance time should be measured from cargo landing rather than IGM submission.
"In many cases, we complete the Bill of Entry while the vessel is still at sea," he said, adding that starting the clock from IGM submission would not reflect actual clearance time.
Amirul Haque, president of the Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said "Customs, the port and the NBR should sit together with stakeholders to identify the reasons behind cargo release delays and find a way out."
Customs seeks five-day deadline
In a recent letter to the NBR chairman, Chattogram Customs Commissioner Mahbubur Rahman said the Customs House had accelerated assessments, with 77% of consignments assessed within one day and 88–90% within three days of Bill of Entry submission.
"More than 90% of the time is spent by importers or their agents, from IGM submission to filing the Bill of Entry, payment of duties and taxes, and taking delivery," he said.
He said Customs accounts for around 8% of total clearance time, compared with more than 75% for importers and their agents, in line with World Customs Organization methodology.
Customs has proposed enforcing the five-day deadline for import declarations under Section 84 of the Customs Act, 2023. The law requires declarations to be submitted within five days of cargo landing, but the enforcement procedure has yet to be framed.
Physical inspection is not the whole problem
Channel-wise data suggest that physical inspections are not the main cause of clearance delays. Imports routed through the red channel for physical examination take an average of 19 days and 23 hours to clear but account for only 8.99% of consignments.
The remaining 91.01%, processed through the yellow channel via documentary assessment, still take 10 days and 20 hours to clear.
Customs officials said risk-based assessment has limited physical inspections to around 5–6% of consignments, with 94–95% released after documentary verification.
Around 70% of machinery and raw material imports by established industrial companies selected for examination are exempted from physical inspection following risk assessment.
Between January and June 2026, Customs scanned 278,732 containers and flagged 199 as suspicious. Physical examinations found irregularities in 81 of the flagged containers.
11 days can become four
The latest findings broadly align with an earlier NBR Time Release Study conducted using the World Customs Organization methodology. The 2022 study found that cargo clearance at Chattogram port took an average of 11 days, six hours and 23 minutes, with 72–78% of the time spent collecting and submitting import documents. It also found that pre-arrival processing could cut overall cargo release time by 57%.
The study proposes shifting much of the clearance process to the period before vessels arrive. For machinery imports, pre-arrival processing could cut clearance time from 13.3 days to 3.9 days by moving 9.4 days of administrative work to the pre-arrival stage, leaving payment and delivery for after arrival.
It recommends making pre-arrival processing mandatory under Section 84 of the Customs Act, expanding the Authorised Economic Operator programme, which has only 19 approved entities, and introducing automated alerts after manifest registration.
Other proposals include establishing a dedicated auction commissionerate, introducing a fully automated e-auction platform, setting up specialised destruction yards and directly linking banking data with the Customs network.