New pay scale for govt employees may go before cabinet Monday

A draft of the new pay structure for government officials and employees has been prepared, and it may be placed before the Cabinet for approval tomorrow, Monday, sources at the Ministry of Finance told Prothom Alo.

If approved, the process of issuing the official gazette notification will begin, which could take one to two weeks, the sources added.

A 10-member committee, headed by Cabinet Secretary Nasimul Ghani, was formed on 21 April to recommend the implementation of a new pay structure for government employees. The committee has now finalised its recommendations.

Nearly 12 years after the 8th Pay Commission, the interim government formed the 23-member 9th National Pay Commission on 27 July 2025. The commission, headed by former Finance Secretary Zakir Ahmed Khan, submitted its report to then Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus on 21 January this year.

While retaining the existing 20-grade structure, the Zakir Ahmed Khan commission recommended increases of between 100 per cent and 140 per cent in salaries and allowances. It proposed raising the minimum basic salary from Tk 8,250 to Tk 20,000, while increasing the highest basic salary from Tk 78,000 to Tk 160,000.

The commission had said that, while Tk 1.31 trillion is currently spent on approximately 1.4 million government employees and 900,000 pensioners, an additional Tk 1.06 trillion would be required to implement the new pay structure.

However, sources said the Nasimul Ghani committee did not recommend salary increases of more than 100 per cent. The committee had proposed implementing the new pay structure in two stages over two years: basic salaries from 1 July of the current financial year, followed by allowances from 1 July of the next financial year.

According to Ministry of Finance sources, however, the proposal prepared for submission to the Cabinet differs from the earlier recommendation. Basic salaries will indeed be increased from 1 July, but the increases will be implemented in stages.

Finance Minister Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury announced while presenting the national budget in Parliament on 11 June that the new pay structure for government employees would be implemented in phases from 1 July this year.

In his budget speech, he said government employees had been receiving salaries and allowances under the same pay structure for nearly 11 years. During that period, the cost of living had risen substantially because of inflation. The new pay structure would therefore be implemented in phases from 1 July, he said.

The budget for the current financial year has allocated Tk 141,434 crore for salaries and allowances—Tk 54,572 crore more than the revised allocation for the previous financial year.

Asked where the funding for the new pay structure would come from, Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury told Prothom Alo last week, “We cannot afford to provide it all at once.”

Asked whether even a two-stage implementation would require a substantial amount of money, the finance minister said, “We are working on it. The calculations are under way. The fiscal space has narrowed considerably because of the huge volume of imports. Even if we want to, we cannot afford to provide it all at once.”