Cabinet Committee Approves Extra Tk 21.42 Crore for BRTA Online Transactions

The Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase has approved an additional expenditure of Tk 21.42 crore under the ongoing online banking service contract of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) due to a significant rise in vehicle-related tax and fee transactions.

The approval was granted at a meeting of the committee held at the Secretariat on Wednesday, chaired by Finance Minister Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury. Committee members and senior officials attended the meeting.

According to meeting sources, the government in June 2021 appointed Computer Network Systems (CNS) as the service provider for collecting all BRTA-related taxes and fees through an online banking platform.

Under the original agreement, CNS was contracted for an estimated 45 million transactions over five years at a rate of Tk 45.35 per transaction. The contract value was set at Tk 218.71 crore, including transaction entry fees and other payable expenses.

The contract is scheduled to expire on July 16, 2026. However, the volume of vehicle tax and fee payments has exceeded earlier projections, creating the need for an additional estimated 4.5 million transactions before the contract period ends.

To accommodate the increased demand, the committee approved an additional Tk 21.42 crore, including VAT and related charges, raising the revised contract value to Tk 240.14 crore.

The variation represents a 9.8 percent increase over the original contract amount.

Officials said the surge in transactions was driven by government measures introduced in December 2022 to simplify services such as driving licence issuance, vehicle registration, ownership transfer and correction of vehicle information. In addition, repeated waivers of late-payment penalties on various taxes and fees encouraged more users to complete transactions through the online platform.

//DBtech/BNO/EK//