Tourism and aviation

Airport traffic, airline profitability and tourism spending are related, but they are not interchangeable measures of success. Bangladesh’s aviation investment needs to be assessed alongside destination services and reliable visitor accounts. A stronger tourism economy would connect transport capacity with reasons to visit and businesses able to serve those visitors.

Travel spending, aviation and tourism institutions

The travel account is small, one sided and badly measured. On the World Bank series, international arrivals were 139,000 in 2010, 104,000 in 2013, 267,000 in 2018 and 323,000 in 2019, after which the series stops [WB WDI 2019]; the 2009 to 2010 discontinuity, 267,000 down to 139,000, is a definition change the source available to this chapter does not explain, and no post 2019 arrivals figure could be confirmed here; the UNWTO series the World Bank mirrors and the ministry's own tourism statistics would resolve it. Travel receipts were 388 million USD in 2019 and 217 million USD in 2020 [WB WDI 2020]; outbound spending was 1,389 million USD in 2019 and 659 million USD in 2020 [WB WDI 2020]. Travel is the services account's most asymmetric line: 0.45 billion USD of exports against 1.68 billion USD of imports in calendar 2023, near four to one [IMF BOP 2023].

The airport record is the mirror image of growth. Passengers through CAAB airports fell to 2.354 million in FY21 under pandemic restrictions, then rose more than fivefold in three years: 8.219 million in FY22, 11.415 million in FY23 and 12.85 million in FY24 [CAAB 2024]. Cargo moved from 278 thousand MT in FY21 to 362 thousand MT in FY24 [CAAB 2024]. Aircraft landings rose from 70,352 in FY21 to 112,400 in FY24 [CAAB 2024], and overflights, movements through Bangladeshi airspace that neither begin nor end here, rose from 90,504 to 142,300 [CAAB 2024].

Overflights are the purest foreign exchange earn in the transport system, navigation charges collected without a passenger setting foot in the country, and their 57 percent three year growth is the traffic the hub scenario would monetise. The FY23 operating result of 2,011.65 crore BDT [CAAB 2023] makes the authority one of the profitable state enterprises chapter 41's SOE account inventorises, and the contrast with every tourism body on the ministry's organogram is the chapter's institutional signature.

Biman's financial record is a round trip: viable before the pandemic, hollowed by it, restored since. Operating revenue fell from 5,756.6 crore BDT in FY19 [Biman 2019] and a restated 5,016.1 crore BDT in FY20 [Biman 2021] to a 4,107.5 crore BDT trough in FY21, then recovered through 6,914.3 and 9,621.8 crore BDT in FY22 and FY23 [Biman 2023] to 10,645.3 and 11,614.7 crore BDT in FY24 and FY25 [Biman 2025]. Operating profit held through the cycle at 1,775.5, 1,566.9 and 1,611.6 crore BDT in FY23, FY24 and FY25 [Biman 2025] [Biman 2023], so the swing to a 785.2 crore BDT net profit in FY25 from 282.2 crore BDT in FY24 came from below the operating line: the foreign exchange loss halved from 762.6 crore BDT in FY24 to 349.1 crore BDT in FY25 as the taka steadied after the float chapter 05 records, and finance expense fell to 310.8 crore BDT [Biman 2025].

The balance sheet repaired at the same time: non current loans and borrowings fell from 7,252.9 crore BDT at end FY24 to 6,099.4 crore BDT at end FY25, with a further 1,348.0 crore BDT current; retained earnings turned from minus 334.8 crore BDT to plus 446.4 crore BDT; and the government converted 683.8 crore BDT of standing equity into share capital, taking paid up capital to 2,766.2 crore BDT without a fresh taka of budget cash [Biman 2025]. The airline holds 2,575.7 crore BDT of cash against total assets of 16,961.4 crore BDT, of which 10,718.5 crore BDT is property and equipment, the fleet's book home [Biman 2025].

The statements disclose no fleet: no aircraft count, type breakdown or destination list sits in the audited text; that could not be confirmed, the Biman annual report the resolving source. Operations skew international: the corporate planning department reported 132,017 international against 61,486 domestic passengers in September 2025, not confirmed against any other source available to this chapter [Biman 2025, note: corporate planning department monthly report to the ministry].

The tourism institutions show the other face. The Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation operated 55 commercial tourism and hospitality units at FY23, 31 directly and 24 on lease, trained 948 people, and lost 2.30 crore BDT at the operating line while clearing 0.20 crore BDT before tax, chapter conversions of the stored million taka figures [Parjatan 2023]. The private sector around it is measured once and long ago: the 2013 economic census counted 816,853 persons engaged in accommodation and food service activities [BBS EconCensus 2013], and no newer room stock or bed capacity series exists in the cited reports; that could not be confirmed, the next economic census the resolving source.

Cox's Bazar, the natural beach resort, is also the camp district: chapter 46's host economy record, urban growth of 8.03 percent a year against a registered caseload above 1.17 million persons, is the backdrop any resort strategy there must be read against [BBS Census 2022] [UNHCR 2026]. The Sundarbans' 801,700 hectares sit under chapter 29's mangrove account [Forest Department 2023], Sylhet's hills under the tea and remittance economies chapter 14 traces, and no visitor count for any of the three destinations exists in the cited reports; that could not be confirmed, the Forest Department and district administrations the resolving sources.

The construction record is where the state's preference is legible. The FY24 ADP book carried twelve CAAB projects with a combined cost of 31,728.60 crore BDT, cumulative expenditure of 11,692.55 crore BDT and FY24 allocations of 6,824.40 crore BDT [Planning Commission ADP 2024]. The Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport expansion, the third passenger terminal, is the programme's centre of gravity: cost 21,399.06 crore BDT on its second revision, cumulative expenditure 8,558.24 crore BDT against an FY24 allocation of 5,498.97 crore BDT [Planning Commission ADP 2024], 40.0 percent of cost spent by the book's close, calculation from the cited figures.

Around it sit the regional works: Cox's Bazar runway extension at 3,709.61 crore BDT and its international terminal building at 277.88 crore BDT, Sylhet Osmani expansion at 2,309.79 crore BDT, the CNS-ATM radar at 730.14 crore BDT, runway overlays at Jessore, Saidpur and Rajshahi at 566.76 crore BDT and strengthening at Chattogram at 540.52 crore BDT [Planning Commission ADP 2024].

How airports, airlines and destinations earn

Aviation's mechanism is charging for passage through a fixed point. Every landing, every overflight and every passenger processed passes a CAAB counter, so the authority's revenue scales with traffic and its FY23 operating profit [CAAB 2023] needs no destination to exist, only movement. The same logic sets the construction preference the ADP books show: terminals and runways are single counter assets with engineerable costs, while a destination is a bundle, visa counter, road, hotel, policing, waste, signage, whose quality no single agency owns; the state builds the counter because the counter bills and underbuilds the bundle because its rents are diffuse. The new terminal adds capacity at Dhaka without changing why a passenger would choose Dhaka over Singapore or Kuala Lumpur as a purpose of travel rather than a passage, chapter 24's megaproject pattern.

Biman's restored profitability runs through the exchange rate, which is why its durability is borrowed. The airline's costs are dollar weighted, fuel, lease rentals, maintenance, spares, while much of its revenue is local currency, so each taka step prints straight into the foreign exchange loss line, which more than halved in FY25 after the rate steadied near 122 taka to the dollar, letting 1,611.6 crore BDT of operating profit reach the bottom line [BIS 2026] [Biman 2025]. This is a genuine regime change, the market rate removed the penalty the old peg charged on dollar liabilities, but it is a cycle the airline rides rather than an edge it owns: a second depreciation leg reopens the loss line within a year.

The equity conversion of 683.8 crore BDT cleaned the ledger without costing the budget, the good news version of chapter 41's SOE story: the airline is no longer asking, and the moment it stops earning the question returns.

Tourism's mechanism is the arbitrage the country currently loses. The travel account's near four to one import skew [IMF BOP 2023] says the constraint is not the willingness of Bangladeshis to spend on travel, 1,389 million USD outbound in 2019 [WB WDI 2020], but the package on offer inbound. Three frictions close it. Visa administration is reciprocal and slow: the specifics of the visa on arrival list and the e-visa record are administrative facts with no series available to this chapter, and could not be confirmed; the ministry and the consular network would resolve them, and every regional competitor moved faster on exactly this lever in the 2010s.

Route economics are the friction with the newest paper. The ministry's FY2025-26 budget records the access file moving: bilateral air services agreements signed with Ethiopia on 6 December 2023 and Switzerland on 4 June 2024, the European Union air transport agreement signed on 7 June 2024, a memorandum with Saudi Arabia on 23 August 2023 and a tourism cooperation memorandum with Thailand on 26 April 2024 [MoCAT 2026]. Access is necessary and not sufficient: carriers price Dhaka as an origin destination market, not a hub, so the 142,300 overflights of FY24 [CAAB 2024] pass over unsold connections, and Biman's network skews to the migration corridors chapter 21 records rather than leisure gateways.

The safety file caps the strongest market: the ministry's KPI table records the FAA safety category at Category 2 with Category 1 as the medium-term target, a goal its own footnote conditions on passing the IASA audit, the FAA scheduling it and diplomatic relations [MoCAT 2026]; Category 2 is the regulatory ceiling on new United States bound long haul service. Security perception is the friction chapter 20 names first: a destination brand is a stock built over years and destroyed in a headline, and the country's information environment, chapter 52's subject, prices Bangladesh's stock accordingly.

None of these frictions yields to capital expenditure, which is why two development books that each commit more than 30,000 crore BDT to aviation works [Planning Commission ADP 2024] [Planning Commission ADP 2025] can leave the travel account exactly where it was.

The measurement failure is itself a mechanism. Arrivals stopped being published in the series the world reads after 2019 [WB WDI 2019], destination counts do not exist here, and the two tourism books disagree. A ministry that cannot count its customers cannot price them or defend a budget line for them, which completes the circle: the weakest statistics and the weakest institutions reinforce each other, the pattern chapter 53 documents economy wide.

Decisions on capacity and destination services

The pipeline now has current year numbers. The FY2025-26 revised ADP carries nine CAAB projects with a combined cost of 30,439.40 crore BDT, cumulative expenditure of 21,052.69 crore BDT and FY26 allocations of 1,216.47 crore BDT, lakh taka converted to crore [Planning Commission ADP 2025]. The terminal dominates completion: the book carries the Hazrat Shahjalal expansion first phase, second revision, at a cost of 21,365.52 crore BDT, cumulative expenditure of 18,504.77 crore BDT, 86.6 percent of cost, an FY26 allocation of 306.45 crore BDT and a June 2026 completion target [Planning Commission ADP 2025]; physical completion and the final cost could not be confirmed past the books; IMED and CAAB would resolve them.

Around it: the Cox's Bazar runway extension at 3,709.61 crore BDT of cost, 46.1 percent spent and 450.00 crore BDT of FY26 allocation against a December 2026 target; the Sylhet Osmani expansion at 2,780.67 crore BDT of cost, 12.0 percent spent and 234.06 crore BDT allocated against a December 2027 target; 180.65 crore BDT for the Jessore, Saidpur and Rajshahi runway overlays and 45.31 crore BDT for the Chattogram runway strengthening [Planning Commission ADP 2025]. Three works take no allocation in FY26: the CNS-ATM radar at a book cost of 942.90 crore BDT, the Cox's Bazar international terminal building at 362.63 crore BDT and the Chattogram expansion design consultancy [Planning Commission ADP 2025].

The demand scenario arithmetic is bounded and modest. Chapter 15's scenarios carry no tourism line, so this chapter supplies one: the reform scenario assumes visa reciprocity widens, the terminal's capacity is sold to new frequencies, and travel exports double from the 0.45 billion USD calendar 2023 base toward the 1 billion USD chapter 20 marks as the turn. The stall scenario assumes none of the institutional moves happen, the terminal services the outbound flow at lower unit cost, and the travel account's import skew deepens as incomes grow. The baseline is the drift between them: airports profitable, the airline profitable outside fuel and currency shocks, receipts stagnant.

No international forecaster publishes a Bangladesh tourism receipt projection available to this chapter, and the ministry's tourist arrivals KPI row survives storage without readable values [MoCAT 2026], so the decade's named projections here are the construction target dates above and the scenario bounds; no other forward figure here is established.

Biman's decade decision is disclosure and scale, not survival. The airline that closes FY25 with 6,099.4 crore BDT of non current borrowings, 446.4 crore BDT of retained earnings and no new equity [Biman 2025] has set its own bar: the citizens charter targets a place among Asia's ten best airlines by 2030 [Biman 2026, note: citizens charter updated 24 March 2026]. The fleet question is the decade's capital question: the 10,718.5 crore BDT book value of property and equipment [Biman 2025] ages one year per year, renewal is dollar finance, and the aircraft counts and lease maturities behind that number could not be confirmed; the Biman annual report would resolve them. A listed or bond financing route would run through chapter 07's capital markets, and the disclosure that route requires is itself the reform.

Each destination decision now has an owner with or without money. The FY26 book carries five Parjatan projects at a combined cost of 186.14 crore BDT with 22.70 crore BDT of FY26 allocation, 1.8 percent of the ministry's combined development allocation, against the 1,216.47 crore BDT the same book gives CAAB, more than 53 to 1 [Planning Commission ADP 2025]: the Parki beach facilities at Chattogram, 71.25 crore BDT of cost and 15.68 crore BDT of allocation, 78 percent spent; the Nijhum Dwip centre at Noakhali, 2.80 crore BDT allocated; and a 1.20 crore BDT feasibility study for a tourism building on the corporation's Mohakhali land, its only new start [Planning Commission ADP 2025].

Visa administration belongs to the ministry and the missions, route negotiation now has the paper trail above, destination management belongs to the corporation whose 55 units and 2.30 crore BDT operating loss [Parjatan 2023] measure its reach, and the statistics belong to BBS and the ministry jointly; chapter 60's nation brand account, chapter 46's Cox's Bazar file and chapter 41's SOE ledger own the adjacent decisions. The decade test is narrow: a tourism sector that counts its customers, publishes the count and grows the travel credit line is a sector that decided to exist.

How to test the argument. The aviation and tourism authorities should separate passengers, foreign visitor spending and resident travel. If airport traffic grows while visitor spending remains weak, destination services and the passenger mix need examination; traffic alone cannot validate the tourism case.

Risks and opportunities

Risks. First, the fuel and currency cycle reverses Biman's profit: the net profit of 785.2 crore BDT in FY25 rode a foreign exchange loss line that fell from 762.6 crore BDT to 349.1 crore BDT [Biman 2025], and a depreciation leg would reprint it; monitor the FX loss line, with anything back above 500 crore BDT signalling the cycle has turned. Second, terminal white elephant risk: 18,504.77 crore BDT spent against a 21,365.52 crore BDT cost by the FY26 book [Planning Commission ADP 2025] buys capacity whose logic assumes traffic that chooses Dhaka; if arrivals and transfers stay flat the terminal services departures alone, and monitor passenger growth off the 12.85 million FY24 base [CAAB 2024].

Third, a security or political shock to the brand: the 1,178,003 person registered Rohingya caseload [UNHCR 2026] fixes the camp economy chapter 46 records in the flagship beach district's news exposure, and any incident reprices the perception stock instantly; monitor the travel credit line, which falls within a quarter of a reputational event.

Upside. First, the outbound recapture: 1,389 million USD of outbound spending in 2019 [WB WDI 2020] is domestic tourism demand currently imported, and a visa and packaging shift that recaptures even a modest share could reduce travel imports; domestic tourism by residents does not itself increase travel-export credits; monitor the domestic segment's first credible count, not yet confirmed; the ministry would resolve it. Second, airspace and cargo adjacency: overflights at 142,300 and cargo at 362 thousand MT in FY24 [CAAB 2024] are the flows that grow with the region regardless of local tourism, and CNS-ATM completion converts them into durable route charge revenue; monitor the overflight count's growth rate.

Third, institutional convergence: an airline earning its own equity and an authority earning 2,011.65 crore BDT [CAAB 2023] [Biman 2025] are the two most financeable entities in their ministry, and a disclosure or listing move would import the private capital the destinations lack; monitor the first published fleet plan or audited destination level revenue.

Tourism and aviation indicators to follow

The benchmarks below are author-proposed monitoring points, not validated causal cutoffs or official forecasts.

1. Passengers through CAAB airports. Current value 12.85 million in FY24 [CAAB 2024]. Proposed benchmark: sustained growth above 10 percent a year through the terminal's operation would indicate the hub regime the investment assumes; two consecutive years below the FY23 level of 11.415 million would indicate the white elephant path.
2. Travel exports in the balance of payments. Current value 0.45 billion USD in calendar 2023 [IMF BOP 2023]. Proposed benchmark: passing the 1 billion USD mark chapter 20 sets may indicate the monetisation turn; a fall below 0.3 billion USD may indicate the ornamental path and shows a brand shock faster than any arrivals series.
3. The travel account ratio. Current value 0.45 billion USD of exports against 1.68 billion USD of imports in calendar 2023, imports near four to one [IMF BOP 2023]. Proposed benchmark: the ratio moving below three to one is the recapture scenario arriving; imports passing 2.5 billion USD a year with flat exports is the outbound leakage compounding.
4. Biman's profit after tax and the FX loss line. Current values 785.2 crore BDT net profit and 349.1 crore BDT FX loss in FY25 [Biman 2025]. Proposed benchmark: a second consecutive year above 500 crore BDT net profit without new equity may indicate earned autonomy; an FX loss back above 500 crore BDT or a return to negative retained earnings would indicate the cycle and the peg habits returning.
5. The destination side of the development books. Current values: five Parjatan projects carrying 22.70 crore BDT of FY26 allocation against 1,216.47 crore BDT for nine CAAB projects, 1.8 percent of the ministry's combined development allocation [Planning Commission ADP 2025]. Proposed benchmark: a Parjatan allocation above 100 crore BDT in the FY27 or FY28 books, the window the current fiscal framework targets, or a funded Cox's Bazar phase two execution line, may indicate the pivot from counters to bundles; a third consecutive book below 25 crore BDT may indicate the hardware only decade.

Sources

[WB WDI 2019] World Bank World Development Indicators, international tourism arrivals, series: ST.INT.ARVL, series ends 2019, via the hdx wb_combined.csv mirror.

[WB WDI 2020] World Bank World Development Indicators, international tourism travel receipts and expenditure, series: ST.INT.TVLR.CD, ST.INT.XPND.CD, via the hdx wb_combined.csv mirror.

[IMF BOP 2023] IMF Balance of Payments statistics via the trade/bd_bop_flows parquet, series: bd_bop_flows, travel exports and travel imports calendar 2023 (calendar-year basis, not fiscal year), as carried in chapter 20.

[CAAB 2023] Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh operating result FY23 via the MoF SOE evaluation tables in bdpolicy.db, series: caab_operating_profit_crore_bdt.

[CAAB 2024] Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh airport operations FY21 to FY24, APA and budget reports via the MoF SOE evaluation tables in bdpolicy.db, series: caab_passengers_transported_million, caab_cargo_transported_thousand_mt, caab_aircraft_landings_count, caab_overflights_count.

[Biman 2019] Biman Bangladesh Airlines Limited, audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2019, operating revenue.

[Biman 2021] Biman Bangladesh Airlines Limited, audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2021, operating revenue including the FY20 comparative.

[Biman 2023] Biman Bangladesh Airlines Limited, audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2023, operating revenue and operating profit including FY22 comparatives.

[Biman 2025] Biman Bangladesh Airlines Limited, audited consolidated and separate financial statements for the year ended 30 June 2025, signed 21 December 2025, and the corporate planning department monthly operations report to the ministry for September 2025.

[Biman 2026] Biman Bangladesh Airlines Limited, citizens charter updated 24 March 2026, vision statement targeting a place among Asia's ten best airlines by 2030, via ocr_text/biman_deep.

[MoCAT 2026] Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism annual budget framework FY2025-26, KPI indicator table including the FAA safety category, bilateral air services agreement and memorandum signing record, via ocr_text/govtwin_min_aviation.

[Parjatan 2023] Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation units, training and operating results FY23 via the MoF SOE evaluation tables in bdpolicy.db, series: parjatan_total_tourism_units_nos and the related unit, training and profit series.

[BBS EconCensus 2013] BBS Economic Census 2013, persons engaged in accommodation and food service activities, via bdpolicy.db, series: ec2013_accommodation_food_employment_nos.

[Planning Commission ADP 2024] Annual Development Programme FY2023-24 book, Programming Division, Planning Commission, June 2023, CAAB project costs, allocations and cumulative expenditure, lakh taka converted to crore, via the adp_book_projects table in bdpolicy.db.

[Planning Commission ADP 2025] Revised Annual Development Programme FY2025-26, Programming Division, Planning Commission, civil aviation and tourism ministry project rows, lakh taka converted to crore, via the adp_projects table in bdpolicy.db.

[BBS Census 2022] BBS Population and Housing Census 2022, Cox's Bazar district growth, via bdpolicy.db, series: bbs_census_district_growth_dependency.

[UNHCR 2026] UNHCR registered refugee stock in Bangladesh via bdpolicy.db, series: unhcr_refugees_rohingya_bangladesh, end-2025 reading as carried in chapter 46.

[Forest Department 2023] Bangladesh Forest Department, Sundarbans mangrove area FY23, as carried in chapter 29.

[BIS 2026] Bank for International Settlements USD/BDT exchange rate via bdpolicy.db, series: bis_usd_bdt_monthly_eop.