Universal Pension Scheme: Why So Few Bangladeshis Have Joined

Jahanara Begum cleans three flats in Mohammadpur every morning. She is 34, earns about Tk 12,000 a month and has never had a bank account. Two years ago, a man at the Union Digital Centre in her home village in Barishal told her about a government pension. Pay Tk 500 a month, he said, and the government would add another Tk 500. At 60, she would get a monthly pension for the rest of her life.

She signed up. She paid for five months. Then her husband fell ill, the hospital bills came, and the Tk 500 stopped. “Who will be alive at 60?” she says now. “I need the money today.”

Jahanara’s story captures both the promise and the problem of Bangladesh’s Universal Pension Scheme. It was designed for people exactly like her: the tens of millions of Bangladeshis who work without a contract, a provident fund or any income in old age. Yet three years after its launch, the scheme has fewer than four lakh members, and many of them, the data suggests, have stopped paying.

We read the National Pension Authority’s published information, central government statements and reporting by Prothom Alo, The Daily Star, The Business Standard, bdnews24.com and others. We also ran our own calculations to show what different savers could expect. Here is the full picture.

What is the Universal Pension Scheme?

For most of Bangladesh’s history, only government employees, members of the armed forces and some workers in large companies had any kind of pension. Everyone else, from farmers and shopkeepers to garment workers and freelancers, relied on their children, their savings or the small old-age allowance for the poorest.

The Universal Pension Scheme (UPS), known in Bangla as the Sarbojanin Pension, was created to change that. Parliament passed the Universal Pension Management Act in early 2023, and the National Pension Authority (NPA) was set up to run it. Then prime minister Sheikh Hasina launched the scheme on 17 August 2023.

The idea is simple. You choose a scheme and a monthly amount, and pay it regularly. The NPA invests the money, mostly in government bonds. When you turn 60, you start getting a monthly pension for the rest of your life. The size of the pension depends on how much you paid, for how long, and the returns earned on your money.

The scheme is voluntary. The original plan said it could later become mandatory for some groups, but no such step has been taken.

Who can join, and what are the four schemes?

The scheme is mainly for Bangladeshi citizens aged 18 to 50 who do not receive a government pension. People over 50 can also join, but must pay for at least 10 years before they can draw a pension. You need a national ID card. Expatriates can join with a passport.

There are four schemes, each for a different group. According to The Business Standard, the monthly contribution options are:

Scheme	Who it is for	Monthly contribution	Government contribution
Probash	Bangladeshis living and working abroad	Tk 2,000 to Tk 10,000 (paid in foreign currency)	None
Progoti	Employees of private companies and non-government organisations	Tk 2,000 to Tk 10,000	None; employer can pay half if it joins
Surokkha	Self-employed and informal workers, such as farmers, labourers, rickshaw pullers and freelancers	Tk 1,000 to Tk 5,000	None
Samata	Low-income people earning under Tk 60,000 a year	Tk 500	Tk 500 a month (total Tk 1,000)

A fifth scheme, Prottoy, was introduced in 2024 for employees of public universities and state-owned and autonomous bodies. It caused a strike by public university teachers from 1 July 2024, who said it would cut their benefits. The government scrapped Prottoy in early August 2024, amid the wider unrest that ended the Awami League government, The Daily Star reported.

What do you get, and what are the rules?

These are the main rules as published by the NPA and reported by The Daily Star, Prothom Alo and bdnews24.com:

Rule	What it means
Pension age	Monthly pension starts at 60 and continues for life.
Minimum period	You must contribute for at least 10 years to get a pension.
Lump sum at 60	Since May 2025, you can take 30% of your accumulated fund as a lump sum at 60; the rest pays your monthly pension.
Loans	You can borrow up to 50% of the money you have paid in.
If you die before the pension starts	Your nominee gets the money you paid plus profit.
If you die after the pension starts	Your nominee continues to receive the pension. The board raised the age limit for this from 75 to 80 in September 2026.
Tax	Contributions qualify for an income tax rebate; the pension itself is tax-free.
How to pay	Through 45 banks and financial institutions, bKash or Nagad; registration also at Union Digital Centres.
Withdrawal before 60	Not allowed under current rules. A proposal to allow it after five years in special cases is under discussion.

How much return does the scheme pay?

The NPA credits a return to each subscriber’s account every year, based on what its investments earned. For 2024-25, the highest rate was 11.61%, according to the NPA’s website. In September 2026, the NPA board raised the rate for 2025-26 investments from 11.68% to 11.72%, bdnews24.com reported. The meeting was chaired by Finance and Planning Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury.

These rates are high because most of the money is invested in government bonds, which have paid high interest in recent years. About 95% of the fund was in government bonds at last count, a Daily Star opinion piece noted. That makes the scheme fairly safe, as long as the government pays its debts. But it also means returns will fall if government bond rates fall. The rate is not guaranteed for the next 30 years.

What could you actually get at 60?

This is the question most people care about. The NPA’s website has calculators, but we ran our own numbers so you can see how the amount changes with returns. These are illustrations only, not promises. They assume you pay every month without a break and that the return stays the same every year.

Monthly payment	Years	Total you pay	Fund at 60 if return is 8%	At 10%	At 11.72%
Tk 1,000 (e.g. Samata total)	30	Tk 3.6 lakh	Tk 14.9 lakh	Tk 22.6 lakh	Tk 32.8 lakh
Tk 1,000	20	Tk 2.4 lakh	Tk 5.9 lakh	Tk 7.6 lakh	Tk 9.5 lakh
Tk 3,000	30	Tk 10.8 lakh	Tk 44.7 lakh	Tk 67.8 lakh	Tk 98.5 lakh
Tk 5,000	25	Tk 15 lakh	Tk 47.6 lakh	Tk 66.3 lakh	Tk 89.4 lakh
Tk 2,000	10	Tk 2.4 lakh	Tk 3.7 lakh	Tk 4.1 lakh	Tk 4.5 lakh

Take the Tk 1,000-a-month example over 30 years at a 10% return. The fund would be about Tk 22.6 lakh at 60 (our calculation). If you take 30% as a lump sum, that is about Tk 6.8 lakh in cash. If the remaining Tk 15.8 lakh were paid out over 20 years at an 8% return, it would give roughly Tk 13,200 a month (our calculation). The NPA’s own formula may differ, because the pension is for life, not a fixed 20 years.

Do not forget inflation

Those numbers look large, but taka in 30 years will buy far less than taka today. If prices rise by 6% a year on average, Tk 1 today will be worth only about 17 paisa in 30 years (our calculation). So a fund of Tk 32.8 lakh in 30 years would have the buying power of about Tk 5.7 lakh today. Inflation in Bangladesh has often been higher than 6% in recent years. This is one reason the NPA has discussed creating a reserve fund to protect pensions from long-term inflation and changes in returns, Prothom Alo reported.

How many people have joined?

Very few, compared with the goal. The scheme aims eventually to cover about 10 crore people. Here is how enrolment has moved, based on NPA figures reported in the press:

Date	Total subscribers	Total deposits	Source
30 June 2024	3,38,931	Tk 99.42 crore	The Business Standard
30 June 2025	3,73,987	Not stated	The Daily Star
28 February 2026	3,76,965	Tk 242 crore	The Business Standard
30 April 2026	3,77,545	Tk 256 crore (Tk 280 crore invested, with profit)	The Daily Star
September 2026	3,79,920	Tk 288.52 crore	Prothom Alo

Most people joined in the first ten months. After that, growth almost stopped. Between June 2025 and September 2026, only about 5,900 new subscribers joined in 15 months (our calculation). The Business Standard reported in March 2026 that the scheme was attracting about 150 new members a month. In January 2026, 240 people joined; in February, 148.

Measured against the 10 crore target, 3,79,920 members is about 0.38% (our calculation). Even against the new government’s nearer goal of one member from each of the country’s nearly 4 crore families, it is less than 1%.

Which schemes are people joining?

Samata, the scheme for low-income people where the government pays half, dominates. According to Prothom Alo’s September 2026 figures:

Scheme	Subscribers	Deposits	Average deposit per subscriber (our calculation)
Samata	2,87,224	Tk 56.85 crore	About Tk 1,980
Probash	1,171 (97 women)	Tk 11.87 crore	About Tk 1,01,000
Progoti and Surokkha (combined)	About 91,500	About Tk 220 crore	About Tk 24,000
Total	3,79,920	Tk 288.52 crore	About Tk 7,600

The Samata number is worth a closer look. Samata members make up about 76% of all subscribers (our calculation), but their average deposit is under Tk 2,000. At Tk 500 a month from the subscriber, that is roughly four months of payments on average, even though many have been members for two to three years. It is not certain whether the deposit figure includes the government’s matching share, so the exact number of months may differ. But the pattern strongly suggests that a large share of Samata members, like Jahanara, have stopped paying.

The Probash scheme for expatriates is the opposite: very few members, but those who joined are paying serious amounts. Just 1,171 people out of the millions of Bangladeshis working abroad had joined.

Why have so few people joined?

Officials, economists and researchers point to the same handful of reasons.

1. Trust

Trust is the biggest issue. The scheme is closely linked in many people’s minds with the previous government, which launched it with heavy publicity. After the political change of August 2024, many subscribers did not know whether the scheme would survive or whether their money was safe. “The programme is not gaining popularity because of a lack of public trust in the government’s system,” Fahmida Khatun, executive director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, told The Business Standard. “The government must build trust to make the universal pension programme attractive to everyone.”

A survey of 200 garment workers by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS), carried out in late 2024 and reported by The Business Standard in February 2025, found that only 1.3% had joined. Some 70% said they were unwilling because they did not trust the scheme. One panellist warned that without transparency in fund management, “workers would not benefit, and only fund managers would.”

2. Not enough money now

In the same BILS survey, 90.6% of garment workers cited financial constraints. For a worker earning Tk 12,000 to Tk 15,000 a month, paying Tk 1,000 or more every month for 30 years is hard, especially when rent, food and school costs keep rising. Even the Samata scheme’s Tk 500 can be too much when an emergency hits.

3. Irregular incomes

Nearly 85% of employed people in Bangladesh work in the informal sector, The Daily Star reported. Farmers earn after the harvest, construction workers earn when there is work, and small traders’ incomes rise and fall with the seasons. A scheme that expects the same payment every month does not fit their lives well. “Limited awareness, trust issues and income irregularities have slowed enrolment,” said Selim Raihan, executive director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM), quoted by The Business Standard.

4. Money locked in until 60

Under current rules, you cannot take your money out before 60, except through a loan of up to half of what you paid. For young people, 60 feels very far away. For poor families who face frequent shocks, locking money away for decades is a big ask. Prothom Alo noted that if subscribers stop paying, their deposits effectively stay trapped. This is why the proposal to allow withdrawal after five years in special cases has drawn attention.

5. Better-looking alternatives

Prothom Alo reported that low uptake is partly because returns look lower than bank deposits, and because there are few immediate benefits before the pension starts. Many middle-class savers prefer savings certificates, fixed deposits or DPS accounts, which they understand and can break if needed. We compared those options in our guide on where to put your first Tk 1 lakh.

6. Employers not joining

The Progoti scheme works best when an employer pays half. But few companies have signed up their staff. Panellists at the BILS discussion noted that workers might have to give up a significant share of their wages, and that some employers are themselves loan defaulters, which does not inspire confidence.

7. Awareness and paperwork

Many people simply do not know how the scheme works, or find the online registration difficult. Officials told The Business Standard that procedural hurdles have slowed enrolment. Agents who register people receive only Tk 15 per registration, which gives banks and MFS providers little reason to promote it.

What is the new government changing?

The BNP government that took office in 2026 has kept the scheme and set bigger targets. At a meeting on 12 May 2026, Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury directed officials to bring at least one member from each of Bangladesh’s nearly 4 crore families into the scheme by 2030, The Daily Star reported. He said informal workers “remain without any retirement protection.”

The Asian Development Bank has pledged $100 million in concessional loans for a project to strengthen the scheme, the same report said. Plans include awareness campaigns, better cyber security and hiring skilled professionals to manage the fund.

Ahead of the NPA board’s fourth meeting on 17 September 2026, a list of proposed changes was circulated, Prothom Alo and Views Bangladesh reported:

Proposal	What it would do	Status as reported
Longer pension for nominees	Extend the pension to a nominee or spouse after the pensioner’s death	Board raised the nominee age limit from 75 to 80 (bdnews24.com); a full lifetime spouse pension was also proposed
Higher return	Credit 11.72% for 2025-26, up from 11.68%	Approved
Health insurance	Cover subscribers for a premium of about Tk 10 to Tk 20 a month	Discussed; board to study the model and risks first
Early withdrawal	Allow withdrawal after five years if a subscriber becomes physically or financially unable to continue	Proposed
Lower pension age	Start pensions at 55 instead of 60	Proposed
Islamic scheme	A Shariah-compliant version of the schemes	NPA approved developing it in 2025, with ADB-funded consultants
Higher agent commission	Raise payment to registering agents from Tk 15 to Tk 25	Proposed
Inflation reserve	A fund to protect against long-term inflation and changes in returns	Proposed
Outsourced workers	Bring outsourced and contract workers into Progoti	Planned

Some of these changes, such as early withdrawal and a lower pension age, would make the scheme more attractive but also more expensive to run. A lower pension age means paying pensions for more years from a smaller fund. Allowing early withdrawal weakens the main purpose of a pension, which is to keep money aside for old age. The board will need to balance popularity against long-term sustainability.

Why does Bangladesh need a pension system at all?

Bangladesh is still a young country, but it is ageing fast. People are living longer, families are smaller, and more children move to cities or abroad for work. The traditional system, in which parents live with and depend on their sons, is weakening. The Daily Star noted a rising dependency ratio as one reason the government is pushing the scheme.

Today, most older people outside government service have no regular income. The poorest receive a small old-age allowance through the social safety net, but it is not enough to live on. Without a pension system, many people will reach old age with little savings and no support. A well-run universal pension could ease the burden on families and on future governments.

A large pension fund can also help the economy. It gathers long-term savings that can be invested in government bonds, infrastructure and, over time, the stock market. In many countries, pension funds are among the biggest investors. One labour rights panellist estimated that if the scheme worked well for garment workers alone, it could collect about Tk 4,048 crore a year, The Business Standard reported. Today, the entire fund is less than Tk 300 crore.

How do other countries make pensions work?

Bangladesh is not the first country to struggle with getting informal workers into a voluntary pension. Common lessons from other countries include:

• Flexible payments: letting people pay whenever they can, in any amount above a small minimum, instead of a fixed monthly sum. This suits farmers and seasonal workers.
• Automatic enrolment: signing up workers automatically through their employer, with the option to leave. People tend to stay in schemes they are already part of.
• Matching contributions: government or employer top-ups, like Samata’s Tk 500, are powerful, but only if people keep paying.
• Easy digital payment: paying through a mobile wallet with a few taps, and getting regular balance updates on the phone.
• Independent, transparent management: publishing regular reports on where the money is invested and how it is performing, so people can see their money is safe.

Bangladesh already has some of these features, such as mobile wallet payments and the Samata top-up. The biggest gaps are flexibility and transparency.

Should you join?

That depends on your situation. This is not personal financial advice, but here is how to think about it.

It may suit you if:

• You have no provident fund, gratuity or other retirement plan.
• You can pay a fixed amount every month for many years without stopping.
• You qualify for Samata and can keep paying Tk 500 a month. Getting Tk 500 from the government for every Tk 500 you pay is a 100% top-up before any returns, which is very hard to beat.
• You are a taxpayer and want the income tax rebate on contributions and a tax-free pension.
• You find it hard to save on your own and want a scheme that forces discipline.
• You work abroad and want a steady income when you return home in old age.

Think carefully if:

• You have no emergency savings yet. Build a small emergency fund first, so a crisis does not force you to stop paying.
• Your income is very irregular and you may not manage fixed payments.
• You may need the money before 60. Under current rules, you cannot withdraw early.
• You are over 50, since you must pay for at least 10 years and will get a smaller pension.

A sensible approach for many people is to combine the pension with other savings: an emergency fund in a bank account, a DPS or savings certificate for medium-term goals, and the pension for old age. Our story on how a family can plan to become a kotipoti shows how long-term saving adds up, and our guide to investing in mutual funds covers another long-term option.

How do you join?

1. Visit the official website, upension.gov.bd, or go to a Union Digital Centre, a participating bank branch or a post office for help.
2. Register with your national ID card number, date of birth and mobile number. Expatriates use their passport.
3. Choose your scheme: Probash, Progoti, Surokkha or Samata. For Samata, you need to meet the low-income criteria.
4. Pick your monthly amount and add a nominee.
5. Pay your first contribution through a bank, bKash, Nagad or another listed channel.
6. Download and keep your receipt and pension ID. Check your account online regularly.

The NPA’s helpline is 16131, from 9 am to 5 pm. Be careful of anyone who asks for money to “register” you or promises extra benefits. Registration through official channels is straightforward.

What would make the scheme succeed?

Based on what experts and officials have said, and on the data, these steps would matter most. This is our analysis.

1. Publish clear, regular reports. Show every quarter how many people pay, how much is in the fund, where it is invested and what it earns.
2. Allow flexible payments. Let people pay in a lump sum after a harvest, skip months without penalty, or pay smaller amounts when times are hard.
3. Bring back lapsed members. Contact the Samata members who stopped paying and make it easy to restart.
4. Protect the scheme from politics. Make clear, through law and practice, that the scheme belongs to subscribers and will survive any change of government.
5. Work with employers. Give companies incentives to enrol staff in Progoti and pay their half.
6. Reach migrants. With record remittances flowing in, the Probash scheme should be promoted at airports, embassies and through remittance apps.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Universal Pension Scheme in Bangladesh?

It is a voluntary government pension, run by the National Pension Authority, for citizens who do not get a government pension. You pay monthly and receive a lifetime pension from age 60.

What are the four schemes?

Probash for expatriates, Progoti for private-sector employees, Surokkha for the self-employed and informal workers, and Samata for low-income people, where the government pays half.

How much do I need to pay?

Samata: Tk 500 a month, with Tk 500 from the government. Surokkha: Tk 1,000 to Tk 5,000. Progoti and Probash: Tk 2,000 to Tk 10,000.

What return does the scheme pay?

The NPA board approved 11.72% for 2025-26 investments, up from 11.68%. Returns are not guaranteed and may change in future years.

Can I withdraw my money before 60?

Not under current rules, but you can take a loan of up to 50% of what you have paid. A proposal to allow withdrawal after five years in special cases is under discussion.

What happens if I die?

If you die before the pension starts, your nominee gets your contributions plus profit. If you die after, your nominee keeps receiving the pension, now until the age of 80 under the September 2026 decision.

How many people have joined?

3,79,920 people by September 2026, with deposits of Tk 288.52 crore, according to Prothom Alo.

Is the money safe?

About 95% of the fund is invested in government bonds, which are among the safest investments in Bangladesh. The main risks are future changes in rules and returns, and inflation reducing the real value of the pension.

Key words explained

Term	What it means
Universal Pension Scheme (UPS)	The government’s voluntary pension for people outside government service.
National Pension Authority (NPA)	The government body that runs the scheme and invests the money.
Subscriber	A person who has joined the scheme and pays contributions.
Contribution	The fixed amount you pay into the scheme each month.
Nominee	The person who receives your money or pension if you die.
Lump sum	A one-time payment; here, up to 30% of your fund at age 60.
Informal sector	Work without a formal contract or benefits, such as farming, day labour and small trade.
Inflation	The general rise in prices, which reduces what money can buy over time.
Shariah-compliant	Following Islamic finance rules, which avoid interest-based investments.
Dependency ratio	The number of children and older people compared with people of working age.

How we reported this

We used information published by the National Pension Authority and reporting by Prothom Alo, The Daily Star, The Business Standard, bdnews24.com and Views Bangladesh, along with a labour survey by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies. Subscriber and deposit figures come from the NPA as reported by these outlets; different reports use different dates, which we have listed. All projections, averages and percentages marked “our calculation” are our own arithmetic and assume steady payments and constant returns, which real life rarely delivers. Proposed rule changes are reported as proposals unless a source confirmed they were approved. This article is for general information and is not personal financial advice.

Editor’s note: Jahanara Begum is an illustrative character created for this story. Her experience reflects problems that low-income subscribers commonly describe, but she is not a real person.