Registration and approvals: RJSC, Invest Bangladesh and the sequence that matters

Bangladesh is an approval jurisdiction. Setting up is less a single filing than a sequence, and the sequence matters: several steps cannot begin until an earlier one has produced a document the next office requires.

The authorities

• Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms (RJSC) — name clearance, incorporation, and the statutory filings a company makes for the rest of its life.
• Invest Bangladesh — the single investment authority that replaced the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA) and the PPP Authority when the Invest Bangladesh Act 2026 came into force on 20 August 2026. It registers foreign investment, permits branch and liaison offices and issues work permits for expatriate employees. The services and the one-stop portal continue under the new name.
• Bangladesh Bank — the central bank, governing inward and outward remittance under the foreign exchange regime.
• National Board of Revenue (NBR) — tax and VAT registration.
• Zone authorities — inside an export processing zone (BEPZA) or a hi-tech park (BHTPA), which remain separate bodies, the zone authority takes the place of several of the above. Economic zones formerly under BEZA now sit with Invest Bangladesh.
• Sector regulators — Bangladesh Bank, IDRA, BTRC, BERC and others, where the activity is licensed.

The sequence for a subsidiary

1. 01Name clearance from the RJSC.
2. 02Open a temporary account with a scheduled bank in Bangladesh and remit the foreign shareholder's capital, obtaining the bank's encashment certificate. Incorporation of a company with foreign shareholding cannot complete without it.
3. 03File the memorandum and articles with the RJSC and obtain the certificate of incorporation.
4. 04Register the investment with Invest Bangladesh (formerly BIDA).
5. 05Obtain the trade licence from the relevant city corporation or local authority.
6. 06Register for tax (TIN) and, where applicable, VAT (BIN) with the NBR.
7. 07Convert the temporary bank account to an operating account; open foreign currency accounts where the business needs them.
8. 08Obtain sectoral licences and, for expatriate staff, work permits.

Branch and liaison offices

A branch or liaison office does not incorporate. It applies to Invest Bangladesh (formerly BIDA) for permission, which is granted for a fixed term with conditions attached — on permitted activities, on remittance of establishment costs, and on reporting. Permission is renewable, and the renewal is not automatic: an office operating outside its approved scope is the usual reason renewal becomes difficult.

How long it takes

What we can say without a table: the gating items are almost always the capital remittance and the sectoral licence, not the incorporation itself. An investor who has their parent-company documents legalised and their bank chosen before starting will move through the process substantially faster than one who has not.

Documents from the parent company

• Certificate of incorporation, memorandum and articles of the foreign parent.
• Board resolution approving the investment and appointing the authorised signatory.
• Passport copies of the foreign directors and shareholders.
• For a branch or liaison office, audited accounts of the parent and the proposed scope of activities.
• All corporate documents notarised and legalised — apostilled, or attested by the Bangladesh mission in the country of origin where the apostille is not available. This is routinely the slowest item and should be started first.