Bangladesh · South Asia
Moving to Chattogram
Chattogram quick facts
Bangladesh at a glance
South Asia
Economy
World Bank · 2025Religion
% of populationBangladesh Population and Housing Census 2022
Cost of living in Chattogram
Can you move to Bangladesh?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter Bangladesh — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in Bangladesh
E visa, N visa, BEPZA — and the Hill Tracts rule that only applies here
The decisive question is which body regulates your employer, because it sets the visa letter, the approval route and the timetable. BIDA handles private-sector employment on an E visa; the NGO Affairs Bureau handles NGO and INGO appointments on an N visa; BEPZA handles the export processing zones — and in Chattogram that third track is a mainstream answer rather than an edge case. All of them route through a Ministry of Home Affairs security clearance which, since October 2025, is applied for digitally through BIDA's One Stop Service portal and is deemed granted after 21 working days without objection. Two things are genuinely local: the Divisional Passport and Visa Office at Mansurabad means in-country extension can be done here, and the Chittagong Hill Tracts immediately east are subject to an advance-notice requirement that does not apply to the city.
Read the full step-by-step guideThe IDP you must get before arrival, a river tunnel nobody uses, and no metro
The rule that strands people is national: an International Driving Permit must be obtained in your home country before you travel, because the BRTA does not issue them and the Automobile Association's process is built for BRTA licence holders going abroad. What is local is the road network. Chattogram has no metro — the answer that transformed Dhaka does not exist here — so the city runs on buses, CNG auto-rickshaws and ride-hailing. The Karnaphuli Tunnel under the river opened in October 2023 and is dramatically underused, which makes the southern shore quicker to reach than its reputation suggests.
Read the full step-by-step guideOpening an account in a trade-finance city, and getting money out again
Bangladesh operates real foreign exchange controls, so the account you open determines what you can later take out. Foreign nationals may hold private foreign currency accounts and Non-Resident Foreign Currency Deposit accounts, and NFCD balances are freely repatriable — but the published minimum deposit for a foreign national is an order of magnitude above the non-resident Bangladeshi one. What is local rather than national is the branch network: Chattogram is where the country's letters of credit and customs clearance happen, so the authorised dealer branches concentrated in Agrabad are unusually experienced with foreign-national and trade documentation.
Read the full step-by-step guidePrivate hospitals, evacuation cover, and the country's cleanest big-city air
The national picture applies: no public cover for foreigners, competent and inexpensive private hospitals, and complex care routed to Bangkok, Singapore or India — which makes medical evacuation the part of the policy most likely to be used. Two things are local and they pull in opposite directions. The air here is much better than in the inland cities, which is a genuine and underrated health benefit over a multi-year posting. Against that, Chattogram carries cyclone exposure from the Bay of Bengal and monsoon landslide risk on its hillsides, neither of which is a Dhaka problem.
Read the full step-by-step guideThe two-SIM passport limit, and why the SIM comes before the bank
SIM registration in Bangladesh is biometric and tied to an identity document, and the ceiling depends on which document you use: a Bangladeshi national ID supports a substantial number of SIMs, while a passport, driving licence or birth certificate supports only two. That is national and applies to foreigners and Bangladeshis alike. Getting the SIM early matters more here than in most countries because mobile financial services — bKash and Nagad — are tied to it. Chattogram's local wrinkle is that foreign-passport registration is only reliably handled at the operators' own customer care centres, which cluster around Agrabad and GEC rather than being spread across the city.
Read the full step-by-step guide182 days, a July–June year, and the certificate you need to leave
Bangladesh's residency test is 182 days in the income year — not 183 — with a second limb catching people at 90 days if they were present more than 365 days across the preceding four years. The income year runs 1 July to 30 June. Non-residents face a flat rate on Bangladeshi income rather than the progressive scale. And the rule that catches almost every departing foreign professional: you cannot leave permanently without a tax clearance certificate. All of that is national. What is local is purely administrative: the NBR runs several taxes zones covering Chattogram division, so you register and file at a Chattogram circle rather than in Dhaka.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
Essential Bengali phrases
Reading a list isn’t learning it. Globe Quest turns these into a trainer — hear each phrase spoken, drill them with spaced repetition, and get scored as you say them out loud.
What to know before you go
The Hill Tracts are restricted; Chattogram city is not — and the distinction matters
CriticalRangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban form the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and a foreign national travelling there must give the Bangladeshi authorities notice in advance — the UK FCDO and Global Affairs Canada both put it at ten days, through the Chittagong Divisional Commissioner's Office. Canada advises against all travel to the three districts. What generic guidance almost always omits is the other half: the FCDO states explicitly that Chittagong City and the other districts of Chittagong Division are not included in the travel warning. So living and working in the city carries no such requirement — but a weekend trip to Bandarban is a ten-day-notice matter, not a spontaneous one, and your employer's security policy may go further than the law does.
Find out which regulator owns your employment before anything else — and here BEPZA is a live answer
CriticalPrivate-sector employment runs through the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority: your sponsor obtains an E-visa recommendation from BIDA, then a work permit through BIDA's One Stop Service portal. NGO and INGO employment runs through the NGO Affairs Bureau on an N visa. Export processing zone employment runs through BEPZA, and in Chattogram that third track is not a footnote — the Chattogram EPZ, the Karnaphuli EPZ and the BEPZA Economic Zone at Mirsharai are all in this district, so a large share of foreign industrial staff here are BEPZA files rather than BIDA ones. A file lodged with the wrong body is restarted, not transferred.
You can do your visa extension in Chattogram — you do not have to go to Dhaka
ImportantThe Department of Immigration & Passports runs Divisional Passport and Visa Offices, and one of the seven is here, at Mansurabad. DIP's own description of these offices is that they issue passports to Bangladeshi nationals in their jurisdiction and visas to foreign nationals. That is a genuine practical advantage over being posted to a city without one, and it is worth confirming with the office which categories it handles before you assume a trip to Agargaon in Dhaka is necessary.
The air here is materially better than Dhaka's, and that is a real quality-of-life difference
ImportantOn the morning of 6 November 2025, when Dhaka recorded an air quality index of 177 and ranked eighth worst in the world, Chattogram recorded 99 — the difference between 'unhealthy' and the edge of 'moderate'. Coastal position and sea breeze do most of that work, and the brick-kiln belt that chokes the inland cities in the dry season is thinner here. It is not clean air by WHO standards, and Bangladesh remains among the world's most polluted countries, but anyone choosing between Bangladeshi postings should weigh this properly rather than assuming the whole country breathes like the capital.
Monsoon here means landslides in the hillside settlements, not just standing water
CriticalChattogram is the only large Bangladeshi city built across hills, and heavy monsoon rain repeatedly triggers landslides and wall collapses on the cut slopes — a run of heavy rain has killed more than twenty people in three days. The Chattogram observatory has recorded 24-hour rainfall above 400 mm. If you are looking at a flat below or on a cut hillside, ask directly about slope stability and drainage, and treat a red-alert forecast as a reason to stay off those roads rather than as background noise.
Tax residence is 182 days, not 183 — and the income year runs July to June
CriticalYou are resident if present for 182 days or more in the income year, or 90 days or more if you were in Bangladesh for more than 365 days across the four preceding years. The income year runs 1 July to 30 June. That is national law and identical in Dhaka, but every element of it differs from the assumption most arrivals bring. Chattogram's own wrinkle is administrative rather than legal: the National Board of Revenue runs several taxes zones in this division, so you file at your local Chattogram circle rather than anywhere in Dhaka.
Top industries & employers
The port and maritime logistics
Chattogram Port Authority, terminal operators, shipping lines, freight forwarders and C&F agents around Agrabad
The Chattogram Port handled 3,409,069 TEU in calendar 2025 — the first year it crossed 34 lakh containers since container operations began in 1977 — and it handles the overwhelming majority of Bangladesh's containerised trade. Almost every logistics, shipping and trade-finance role in the country sits either here or in a Dhaka office reporting to here.
Export processing zones & manufacturing
Enterprises inside the Chattogram EPZ and Karnaphuli EPZ, plus the BEPZA Economic Zone at Mirsharai
BEPZA is a separate regulator with its own permits, and Chattogram is where its weight is concentrated. For a foreign technical or management hire in garments, footwear, electronics or accessories, the employer's zone status determines the whole immigration route.
Ship recycling
Yards along the Sitakunda coast north of the city, and the steel re-rollers they feed
One of the largest ship-recycling coasts in the world, and in the middle of a regulatory step-change: the IMO's Hong Kong Convention entered into force on 26 June 2025, and Bangladesh's yards have been converting to certified 'green' recycling to keep receiving tonnage. It is a live compliance and engineering employment story rather than a static one.
Ready-made garments & footwear
Pacific Jeans, Youngone, KDS Group, plus the buying offices that shadow them
Chattogram is the second pole of the garment industry after the Dhaka belt, with the advantage that the port is on the doorstep. Leather and footwear is disproportionately concentrated here, and so are the technical and compliance roles that come with both.
Steel, cement, energy & heavy industry
BSRM, Abul Khair, PHP Family, Bashundhara and the refinery and power complexes along the coast
Bulk imports arrive here, so heavy industry clusters here: rod and billet mills, cement grinding, edible oil refining and the country's oil refinery. This is where Bangladesh's industrial engineering jobs are, in a way that is simply not true of Dhaka.
Banking, trade finance & the customs trade
Authorised dealer branches in Agrabad, the Chattogram Custom House, C&F agents, and the Chittagong Stock Exchange
Because the letters of credit and the customs clearance happen here, so does the specialist trade-finance and customs-broking economy. If your work is documentary rather than physical, Agrabad rather than the port gate is where it happens.
Where to go in Chattogram
Patenga Sea Beach
Nature · Patenga, at the mouth of the Karnaphuli
The city's beach, at the point where the river meets the Bay of Bengal, with the ships queueing offshore for the port.
Local tip: Go for the shipping, not the swimming — the water is a working estuary and the appeal is watching the anchorage from the breakwater at dusk. Weekday evenings are far calmer than Fridays, when half the city comes.
Chittagong War Cemetery
Culture · Badshah Mia Road, off Zakir Hossain Road
A Commonwealth War Graves cemetery holding around 731 Second World War burials, immaculately kept on a terraced hillside in the middle of the city.
Local tip: One of the quietest places in Chattogram and almost empty on a weekday morning. The Burma campaign context is what makes it land — this was the rear base for it — so read a little before you go rather than after.
Chandanpura Masjid
Landmark · Nabab Siraj-ud-Daulah Road, old Chattogram
An 1870 mosque whose multi-domed, many-minaret facade is the most photographed building in the city, built by craftsmen brought from Lucknow and Bombay.
Local tip: The exterior is the point and it is best in late afternoon light. It sits on a busy road in the old town — combine it with a walk through the surrounding lanes rather than treating it as a single stop.
Foy's Lake
Nature · Khulshi, in the hills north of the centre
A 1924 reservoir created by damming a hill stream, now ringed by wooded slopes with an amusement park attached.
Local tip: Skip the rides and take a boat on the lake instead, or walk the ridge above it. It is the easiest way to understand that Chattogram is a hill city, which no amount of looking at Agrabad will tell you.
Mezban and kala bhuna houses
Food · Across the city, densest around the old town and Chawkbazar
Beef cooked black and dry with the region's own spice balance, plus the chholar dal and white rice that make up a mezban plate.
Local tip: Kala bhuna is not the same dish as Dhaka's beef bhuna and Chattogram people will tell you so. If a colleague invites you to a family mezban, go — it is a genuine social institution here and the restaurant version is a shadow of it.
Sadarghat and the Karnaphuli waterfront
Hidden gemLandmark · South of the old town, on the river
The working river frontage — sampans, country boats, ship chandlers and the ferries across to the southern shore, with the container terminals downstream.
Local tip: Take a sampan across the Karnaphuli for a few taka in the late afternoon and look back at the city. Almost no foreign resident of Khulshi ever does it, and it explains Chattogram in fifteen minutes better than any museum.
Emergency numbers in Chattogram
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