Mobile phone shops stay shut as traders protest NEIR enforcement

Business Report :

A large number of mobile phone shops across the country particularly in Dhaka’s major electronics hubs remained closed on sunday as traders staged a nationwide protest against the government’s decision to begin blocking unregistered handsets through the National Equipment Identity Register (NEIR) from 16 December.

NEIR is a central database that verifies the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers of mobile devices.

Once fully enforced, the system will automatically block illegal, cloned, black-market, or unregistered phones from accessing mobile networks, effectively removing them from use.

While the government says the move is aimed at curbing handset smuggling and protecting revenue, traders warn the sudden enforcement will devastate thousands of small businesses.

At Dhaka’s Bashundhara City shopping complex, one of the largest mobile retail hubs in the country, most shops remained shuttered throughout the day.
“We have kept our store closed since morning,” said Md Kabir, who has been selling mobile handsets for 10 years.

“We want the government to lower the current tax rate and bring small traders under a fair regulatory framework.”

The shutdown was called by the Mobile Business Community Bangladesh (MBCB), which represents thousands of small and medium phone traders.

MBCB’s acting president, Shamim Mollah, said the NEIR system urgently requires reform before any strict enforcement. “NEIR must be restructured.

We are willing to pay taxes, but the policy must be practical,” he said.

Mollah argued that the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) must remove hurdles that prevent traders from importing phones legally.

He highlighted that small retailers are unable to meet requirements such as obtaining a ‘mother company certificate’ to import premium brands like iPhones, while official import duties remain as high as 58 percent a rate traders say makes legal importation unviable. Local assemblers, by contrast, enjoy substantial tax incentives.

When asked whether relying on “luggage baggage” phones effectively makes them illegal importers, Mollah rejected the claim. “We are not illegal. We buy devices carried in by passengers, which has long been a common practice,” he said.

MBCB leaders also alleged that a powerful syndicate of around 11 large businesses now dominates the official import and distribution channels, putting small and medium-sized traders at risk of losing their livelihoods if NEIR is enforced without policy adjustments.

Despite the widespread shutdown among small traders, authorised distributors and local handset manufacturers did not join the protest and continued business as usual.