Importing textiles and apparel: the tariff ladder from fibre to garment
Textiles are where Bangladesh's tariff is most clearly an industrial strategy rather than a revenue measure. Read chapters 52, 61 and 62 in order and you can see the whole policy: raw material enters almost free, fabric is taxed moderately, and finished garments are taxed heavily.
That ladder exists to make it attractive to turn cotton into clothing inside Bangladesh. For an importer, it means the tax you pay depends almost entirely on how finished your goods already are.
The ladder
| Stage | Example code | CD | SD | TTI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raw cotton | 52010000 | 0% | 0% | no percentage shown |
| Cotton waste | 52029910 | 0% | 0% | 12.5% |
| Printed cotton fabric | 52122500 | 25% | 10% | 80.18% |
| Knitted tracksuit | 61121200 | 10% | 0% | 39.75% |
| Knitted hosiery, other textiles | 61159900 | 25% | 40% | 119.38% |
| Woven dress, other textiles | 62044900 | 25% | 40% | 127.95% |
The median TTI tells the same story: chapter 52 (cotton) sits around 80%, while chapters 61 and 62 (apparel) both sit at 104.06%. Finished clothing is taxed roughly 30 points above the fabric it is made from, and both are far above the fibre.
Knitted or woven decides the chapter
This is the classification point that matters most in apparel, and it is purely about construction, not appearance:
- Chapter 61 — articles of apparel, knitted or crocheted. 107 lines.
- Chapter 62 — articles of apparel, not knitted or crocheted (woven). 104 lines.
A shirt is in 61 if the fabric is knitted and in 62 if it is woven. The two chapters mirror each other almost item for item, which makes them easy to confuse and easy to mis-file. Rates are broadly similar but not identical — chapter 62 reaches 127.95% at the top where chapter 61 stops at 119.38%, largely because of a 5% regulatory duty appearing on some woven lines.
If you are unsure, the test is the fabric, not the garment. Ask the supplier for the construction, not the product name.
Worked example: a consignment of woven dresses
62044900: CD 25%, SD 40%, RD 5%, VAT 15%, AT 7.5%, AIT 5%. Assessable value BDT 500,000:
| Step | Base (BDT) | Rate | Tax (BDT) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customs Duty | 500,000 | 25% | 125,000 |
| Regulatory Duty | 500,000 | 5% | 25,000 |
| Supplementary Duty | 650,000 | 40% | 260,000 |
| VAT | 910,000 | 15% | 136,500 |
| Advance Tax | 910,000 | 7.5% | 68,250 |
| Advance Income Tax | 500,000 | 5% | 25,000 |
| Total tax | 639,750 | ||
127.95%, matching the published figure. The tax exceeds the value of the goods. Landed cost before port charges: BDT 1,139,750.
Compare the knitted tracksuit at 61121200, TTI 39.75%. On the same BDT 500,000 the tax would be 198,750 — less than a third. Both are garments. The difference is which line they land on.
The large caveat: bonded warehouses
Everything above describes importing textiles for the domestic market. For the export garment sector, it frequently does not apply.
Export-oriented manufacturers operating under bonded warehouse facilities can import fabric, yarn, trims and accessories with duty suspended, on the basis that the material will leave the country again as finished garments. That is the arrangement the RMG industry is built on, and it is why a tariff showing 80% on fabric does not mean an exporter pays 80%.
Two consequences worth being clear about:
- If you are an exporter, the published rate is not your cost. Your cost is governed by your bond licence, your utilisation permission and your consumption entitlement.
- If you are importing for the domestic market, the published rate very much is your cost — and it is set deliberately high to protect the local industry.
Mixing up these two positions is the most consequential mistake in textile importing. The rates on this site are the published, non-bonded figures.
The ladder, measured across the whole block
The ladder is easy to assert and worth testing. Chapters 50 to 63 contain 819 ad-valorem tariff lines, and averaging the total incidence chapter by chapter shows the escalation plainly:
| Chapter | Content | Lines | Average TTI |
|---|---|---|---|
| 51 | Wool, fine animal hair | 38 | 36.9% |
| 53 | Jute and other vegetable fibres | 25 | 50.48% |
| 59 | Impregnated, coated technical fabrics | 29 | 52.68% |
| 54 | Man-made filaments | 73 | 53.5% |
| 52 | Cotton | 124 | 60.9% |
| 55 | Man-made staple fibres | 113 | 62.0% |
| 58 | Special woven fabrics | 37 | 71.14% |
| 60 | Knitted or crocheted fabrics | 45 | 79.23% |
| 63 | Made-up textile articles | 52 | 83.85% |
| 57 | Carpets | 24 | 96.1% |
| 61 | Knitted apparel | 107 | 100.43% |
| 62 | Woven apparel | 104 | 103.48% |
Fibre chapters average in the thirties to low sixties. Fabric chapters sit in the seventies. The two apparel chapters are the only ones above 100%. The policy is not a rule of thumb; it is visible in the arithmetic of every chapter in the block.
Carpets at chapter 57 are the oddity: all 24 lines carry exactly 96.1%, with no variation whatsoever. Where most chapters spread across a dozen rates, the tariff treats carpets as a single category and taxes them as finished consumer goods regardless of material or construction.
Four steps on one cotton supply chain
Rather than compare chapters, follow one fibre. These four lines are all cotton, all from the same supply chain, each one step further processed:
| Stage | Code | CD | RD | SD | TTI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raw cotton, not carded | 52010000 | 0% | 0% | 0% | specific duty |
| Cotton yarn, uncombed | 52051100 | 10% | 0% | 0% | 39.75% |
| Woven cotton fabric, unbleached | 52081100 | 25% | 5% | 10% | 80.18% |
| Cotton T-shirt, knitted | 61091000 | 25% | 0% | 30% | 104.06% |
Spinning cotton into yarn adds 39.75 points of tax liability. Weaving yarn into fabric adds a further 40.4. Cutting and sewing fabric into a T-shirt adds 23.9 more. The tariff charges for each transformation that could have happened domestically.
What the T-shirt actually costs
61091000 on an assessable value of BDT 1,000,000:
| Step | Base (BDT) | Rate | Tax (BDT) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customs Duty | 1,000,000 | 25% | 250,000 |
| Regulatory Duty | 1,000,000 | 0% | 0 |
| Supplementary Duty | 1,250,000 | 30% | 375,000 |
| VAT | 1,625,000 | 15% | 243,750 |
| Advance Tax | 1,625,000 | 7.5% | 121,875 |
| Advance Income Tax | 1,000,000 | 5% | 50,000 |
| Total tax | 1,040,625 | ||
The tax exceeds the goods. A million taka of imported T-shirts costs BDT 2,040,625 before a single port charge. For a country that exports T-shirts by the container load, importing them is close to prohibited by price — which is the intention.
The 300% outliers
Two lines in this block carry supplementary duty of 300%, reaching a total incidence of 542%:
- 55021000 — artificial filament tow of cellulose acetate
- 56012200 — wadding of man-made fibres and articles thereof
Neither is a textile in any ordinary sense of the word. Cellulose acetate tow and synthetic wadding are the raw materials of cigarette filters, and they are taxed alongside cigarette paper at 48131000, which carries the identical 542%. The tariff has reached across chapters to tax an entire supply chain by its end use rather than its material.
If you import technical fibres, check the line before quoting. Two materials that look adjacent on a datasheet can sit 480 percentage points apart because one of them can be made into a cigarette.
Practical points
- Establish knitted or woven first. It decides the chapter before anything else.
- Fibre composition splits the lines. Cotton, synthetic, wool and "other textiles" are separate, and "other" is often the dearest.
- Weight per square metre matters on fabric — several lines turn on a threshold such as 200 g/m².
- Confirm your bond position before quoting anything to a buyer.
Browse chapter 52 (cotton), chapter 61 (knitted apparel) and chapter 62 (woven apparel).