Somewhere in a small district court in Dhaka, a small supplier of garment accessories is waiting for his case to be heard. He filed a complaint in 2019 about a contract breach. A buyer owed him 14 lakh taka. Refused to pay. Now seven years later his case has been delayed eleven times. Three different judges have handled his case. His legal fees have already exceeded the amount he was owed. He is not an exception. He represents Bangladesh.
"Behind every delayed verdict lies a lost investment, a broken business, and a shrinking economy."
By the end of 2024 there were around 4.5 million pending cases in Bangladesh’s courts. More than 3.8 million of these cases were in the courts. By mid-2025 the number of pending cases had risen to over 4.7 million. The courts are struggling because they do not have money, not enough judges and laws that are not suitable for a country of this size. As a result the courts are very slow. For people and businesses it is hard to get help from the courts.
The effects of this are real. They can be seen in the amount of foreign investment in Bangladesh compared to other countries in the region. They can be seen in the interest rates that lenders charge businesses. This is because contract enforcement is very weak in Bangladesh. According to the World Bank Bangladesh ranks 189th out of 190 countries, in contract enforcement. The effects can also be seen in the decisions of entrepreneurs. They choose not to expand their businesses not to hire people and not to take risks. This is because they do not trust the system to protect them.
The Scale of the Problem:
Bangladesh's crisis is a big problem. It is both a structural and a numerical emergency. The country's courts have a lot of cases. 4.51 Million to be exact. Out of these 31,120 cases are pending in the Appellate Division. Additionally there are 0.58 million cases in the High Court Division as of December 2024.Each judge in the Appellate Division has than 6,220 cases to handle.Judges in the High Court Division have more. Over 7,000 cases each. The lower judiciary handles most of the cases. Over 86%. It only has 1,935 functioning judges for a country with a population of 170 million people. The backlog of cases keeps increasing every year. 33 percent in between 2023 and 2024.The High Courts case disposal rate decreased significantly. It was 73.2 percent in 2023. It dropped to just 38.4 percent in 2024.This means that the court cleared than two cases, for every five it received. At this rate the institution is not solving the backlog.It is actually losing to it. The backlog is getting worse. Bangladeshs judicial crisis is an issue. Our countrys courts are struggling to handle the number of cases.t he judges have a workload the lower judiciary needs judges to handle the cases efficiently the institution needs to find a way to solve the backlog is getting worse. judicial system needs improvement. The problem with Bangladeshs courts is an one. Bangladeshs judiciary got a system that was already too busy when the country became independent in 1971. As more people were born and the economy got bigger more people went to court.. The courts did not get any bigger or better. Cases that should be done in one to two years are still going on after ten years or more. People who study the law say that cases that should be finished in one to two years are often still going on after ten to fifteen years or even longer. The people who lose these cases can keep appealing so it never really ends.
Bangladesh, in Global Context:
Bangladeshs courts are very slow.. When you compare them to other countries you can really see how slow they are. The World Bank said in a report called B- 2024 that it takes about 1,442 days or almost four years to solve a business problem in a Bangladesh court. This is three times longer than it takes in rich countries. If you want to transfer a property title it takes 271 days, which's almost six times longer than it takes in other countries, where it only takes 47 days.
🇩 Bangladesh 1442 days
🇳 India 1,445 days’
🇵 Pakistan 1,071 days
🇸 United States 420 days
🇬Vietnam 400 days’
🇬 Singapore 164 days.
Sources: World Bank B-Ready 2024; World Bank Doing Business Archive
The Judge Shortage Crisis:
The main issue here is that Bangladesh does not have judges. The number of judges compared to the population is very low especially when you look at countries in South Asia. The Appellate Division only has seven judges. The High Court Division has 111 judges. The lower courts, which handle most of the cases have 2,187 judges in total. 319 Of them are not working. For a country with 170 million people this is a problem.
The problem is made worse by the fact that the court buildings and equipment’s are not good enough and the way cases are handled is slow and can be delayed on purpose. Sometimes people have to pay money to get their cases heard which is not fair. Transparency International Bangladesh has done surveys that show many people have to pay bribes to get things done in court, which makes ordinary people give up on their cases or try to solve them in ways that are not legal. This makes the whole system worse.
The same thing is happening in countries. In the United States the number of cases that are still pending after three years has increased by 346 percent in the last twenty years. This is why the Senate passed the JUDGES Act to create 66 federal judgeships. In South Korea it took twice as long to process civil cases in the Supreme Court in just one year going from 7.9 months in 2023 to 12.6 months in 2024.. While these countries are just experiencing some delays Bangladesh is almost at a standstill and it cannot afford the economic problems that come with it.
What Reform Actually Looks Like:
The new government that took power in 2024 has been working faster than the ones to reform the judicial system. In 2025 it issued 78 ordinances to change the way courts work created a Supreme Court Judicial Secretariat promoted and transferred over 1,300 lower court judges and changed the Code of Civil Procedure to reduce delays. The government has also improved the infrastructure with electronic lists of cases online portals for people involved in cases and systems to get certified copies of documents. Some courts have even started doing paper- proceedings.
These are steps but the economy will only benefit if the courts can actually enforce the laws. Just changing the procedures is not enough to clear the backlog of 4.7 million cases without judges more courtrooms and a credible way to enforce the laws. The government has proposed creating 158 courts and 41 out of 64 district-level courts have been established. The progress is better than before. It is still not fast enough to keep up with the number of new cases being filed.
Experts think that the law should be changed to make it mandatory to refer some cases to dispute resolution in civil suits. The law already allows for this. It is not being used much.
Bangladesh also needs a system for plea bargaining in non-violent criminal cases which would help reduce the pressure on criminal courts. If the courts publish data on the number of cases filed, disposed of and pending it would create a system of accountability that does not exist now. The government should make sure that the judicial system is working properly and that the Judges of Bangladesh are able to do their job. The Judge shortage crisis, in Bangladesh needs to be addressed. The Judges of Bangladesh need to be supported.
Conclusion
The data presented in this article leads to an unexpected but sound conclusion: minor regulatory changes may have a greater effect than significant macroeconomic adjustments in the competition to draw in private capital. Small administrative changes can help foster an environment where both domestic and foreign investors are willing to invest their capital for extended periods of time by lowering transactional costs, strengthening the involvement of the private sector, and improving the dependability of institutions.
Coase (1937) and North (1990) pointed out that economic success can be explained not only by the rules but also by the costs associated with their implementation. Governments can unlock levels of investment that are many times greater than the costs of reform if they are prepared to streamline processes, make investments in digitalization, and increase judicial efficiency. In a world of limited public funds and international competition for foreign direct investment, small reforms can be a potent but underutilized tool of policy.
References:
1. 1. The Financial Express BD: Economic reading of Bangladesh's 2025 ordinances — thefinancialexpress.com.bd
2. 2. The Financial Express BD: Judiciary sees further buildup of case backlog — thefinancialexpress.com.bd
3. 3. TBS News: Justice on hold: Addressing Bangladesh's judicial backlog (Jan 2025) — tbsnews.net
4. 4. TBS News: Bangladesh ranks 29 in World Bank's B-Ready index (Aug 2024) — tbsnews.net
5. 5. New Age BD: Courts burdened with 43 lakh pending cases (Aug 2025) — newagebd.net
6. 6. Record of Law: Delay in Justice in Bangladesh: Causes and Impact (Feb 2026) — recordoflaw.in
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