Bangladesh NBR Minimum Import Value Revisions (SRO 225 & 226-Ain/2025/48/Customs)

Mechanism

Bangladesh customs law (Customs Act 2023, s.27(5)) empowers NBR to fix minimum per-unit values for specified goods for customs-duty assessment purposes, overriding the declared transaction value when it falls below the gazetted floor. NBR periodically revises this schedule by SRO. On 29 May 2025 it issued two such orders — SRO 225 and SRO 226-Ain/2025/48/Customs — effective 2 June 2025. Per GTA's classification (which reviewed the orders' effect), the amendments:

• Raised minimum values for chocolate and other cocoa-containing food preparations and

related confectionery lines (a liberalising-to-restrictive shift for importers, since a higher floor raises the assessable duty base for the same declared price).

• Removed the minimum-value floor entirely for base oil used by petroleum

processing/blending industries (a liberalising change, letting these importers be assessed on actual invoice value).

• Adjusted (generally reduced) floors for soap and other cleaning preparations and a

smaller set of additional product lines.

This is a routine, recurring NBR administrative instrument rather than a one-off trade measure — a June 2026 successor order (SRO 189-Ain/2026/44/Customs) explicitly repeals SRO 226/2025 and replaces the entire minimum-value table, confirming both the original SRO's identity/date and that NBR treats the schedule as a living document subject to periodic wholesale revision.

Downstream implications

• Bangladeshi importers of chocolate/cocoa confectionery face a higher assessable customs

value regardless of invoiced price, raising landed cost and consumer prices for imported confectionery.

• Petroleum blending/processing importers of base oil gain pricing flexibility once assessed

on actual transaction value rather than a fixed floor.

• The mechanism is NBR's standard tool for countering suspected under-invoicing; its frequent

revision (last replaced wholesale in June 2026) makes it a recurring, low-severity but broad-based non-tariff cost lever across dozens of consumer-goods HS headings.

Open questions

• Full text/table of the original SRO 225 and SRO 226-Ain/2025/48/Customs (as gazetted 29 May

2025) was not located directly — this filing relies on GTA's review of the orders plus the 2026 repeal notice's confirmation of SRO 226's identity and date. The exact original per-unit minimum values are not yet in the register.

• Whether SRO 225-Ain/2025/48/Customs (covering the "additional goods" reductions) was also

superseded by the June 2026 schedule, or remains independently in force.