Bangladesh is in the final stages of ending machine-readable passport (MRP) issuance and moving to a fully e-passport system, with nearly 99 percent of passport applicants at its missions abroad now opting for e-passports.

The government has instructed missions where e-passport services are fully operational to cease issuing MRPs and set a target of phasing out the older system across all missions by December 31, 2026.

The decision was approved at an inter-ministerial review meeting on May 23, chaired by Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed. Senior Home Ministry Secretary Monzur Morshed Chowdhury presented figures on the rollout of e-passports across 71 passport offices in Bangladesh and 71 missions abroad.

The home minister approved in principle the complete termination of MRP services and directed that expatriates be allowed to use their national identity cards or birth registration certificates to correct information on their e-passports until December 31.

An earlier meeting, held on December 3, 2024 under the former interim government, had set December 31, 2025 as the deadline for ending MRP issuance and transitioning entirely to e-passports.

Although Bangladesh introduced e-passports in 2020, a large proportion of its expatriate workforce continued to rely on MRPs. Many of those passports had been issued using birth registration data that did not match holders’ national ID records, while many expatriates had no national ID at all.

An abrupt cessation of MRP services could have caused problems with the validity of visas and residence permits, particularly for Bangladeshis in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and other Middle Eastern countries. MRP services were therefore maintained temporarily as a convenience for overseas workers.

Major General Md Nurul Anwar, director general of the Department of Immigration and Passports, told the review meeting that although the MRP project formally ended in 2018, maintaining its ageing equipment had become costly and inefficient. He told the home minister that the MRP system had become obsolete.

According to passport department sources, 107,001 e-passports were issued in the week from August 30 to September 3, compared with just one MRP, issued by a consulate abroad. Officials said demand for MRPs was now almost non-existent.

The review meeting approved the deployment of eight mobile enrolment kits to Saudi Arabia and directed officials to launch e-passport services at Indian missions in Delhi and Kolkata. All passport and immigration servers and mobile kits will be brought under home ministry control and security. Overseas missions have also been instructed to remain vigilant to prevent expatriates from being harassed or exploited by middlemen.

Under an earlier decision on December 3, 2024, chaired by then Home Adviser Lieutenant General (retd) Md Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, the government approved a special concession allowing discrepancies of up to eight years between NID and birth registration records to be corrected for e-passport applications.

Addressing the concession, Saiful Islam, a director of the National Identity Card authority, clarified the regulatory framework.

“This eight-year correction facility was provided by the home ministry under its circular,” Saiful Islam told Bonik Barta. “It’s not an NID division circular. In our case, age correction or information verification is always done according to standard operating procedure.”

Existing MRP holders remain eligible to apply for e-passports at any time, the official said, provided their application details match their NID records exactly.

A senior passport department official speaking on condition of anonymity said domestic MRP issuance had been halted for two years and overseas usage had fallen to 5 percent. However, many expatriates continued to seek MRPs because of discrepancies between their NIDs and other documents, the official said, noting that applying for an e-passport in person at an overseas mission was widely regarded as “troublesome”.

In the official’s view, complete termination of MRPs will require expanding consular capacity and adding staff at missions in the Middle East and elsewhere before the system can be closed entirely.