Vehicle registration plates of Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) issues vehicle registration plates for motor vehicles. The vehicle registration plates in Bangladesh use the Bengali alphabet and Bengali numerals. They are produced by Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory, located in Gazipur. The current version of vehicle registration plates started in 1973, and the current digital number plates have been in use since 2012. The international vehicle registration code for Bangladesh is BD.

The general format of vehicle registration plates in Bangladesh is "city - vehicle class letter and number - vehicle number". For example, : "DHAKA-D-11-9999". The "DHAKA" field represents the city name in Bengali letters, the "D" field represents the vehicle class in Bengali letters, the "11" field represents the vehicle's registration series in Bengali numerals and the "9999" field represents the vehicle number of the vehicle in Bengali numerals.

The plates are installed in both the front and rear of the vehicle, with the rear plate permanently attached to the vehicle. The plate is only removed when the vehicle has reached the end of service and has been sold for scrap. New vehicles are not delivered to the purchaser until the plates have been attached at the dealership.

On October 31, 2012, the BRTA started the Digital Number Plate project, where they would start to issue new standardized retro-reflective plates with embossed characters, along with an RFID chip attached to it for tracking purposes. Private vehicles would have black characters on a white background, while commercial vehicles would use black characters on a green background.

Previously, private vehicles would have white characters on a black background, and commercial vehicles would have black characters on a white background, and the characters were sometimes painted on by hand.

In June 2020, the BRTA proposed it’s new idea of personalised number plates, where people can choose their own preferable registrations numbers, with an increased registration fee.


 * 1) If two of the last four digits are repeated, (eg. xx-0011, xx-0022, etc.) the registration fee will be two times higher.
 * 2) If the last four digits are a repeated pair, (eg. xx-1212, xx-5050, etc) the registration fee will be three times higher.
 * 3) If the last four digits are the same, (eg. xx-1111, xx-4444, xx-5555, etc.) the registration fee will be four times higher.
 * 4) If all six digits are a repeated pair, (eg. 20-2020, 35-3535, 42-4242 etc.) the registration fee will be five times higher.
 * 5) If all six digits are the same, (eg. 22-2222, 55-5555, etc.) the registration fee will be six times higher.
 * 6) If the registration number is 77-7777, the registration fee will be seven times higher.

Part 1: Registration Region and Vehicle Class
License plates of Bangladesh are divided into two lines, the first of which displays the city in which the vehicle was registered in, followed by the vehicle's class represented by a Bengali letter.

Part 2: Registration Series and Number
The second line of the license plate shows a six-digit registration number acting as a unique identifier for the vehicle. It consists of a two-digit number representing the registration series it was registered in, followed by a registration number from 0001 to 9999. In older, unupdated vehicles, the plate may not have a two-digit registration series number and instead may only have a 1-4 digit registration number displayed.

The letters permitted in the vehicle registration plate are:

অ ই উ এ ক খ গ ঘ চ ছ জ ঝ ত থ ঢ ড ট ঠ দ ধ ন প ফ ব ভ ম য র ল শ স হ

The numerals permitted in the vehicle registration plate are:

০ ১ ২ ৩ ৪ ৫ ৬ ৭ ৮ ৯

White = Private service vehicle Green = Public service vehicle