Bangladeshi Driving Licence in Kuwait: The Salary Rule Comes First

The General Traffic Department does not publish a country list. Our Kuwait driving licence guide describes decisions as case by case on reciprocity, with GCC and some Western licences converted and most Asian ones sent to a school. We found no report of a Bangladeshi licence being exchanged. Because nothing official is published, the file officer decides, and the checks are the MOI Kuwait portal, the Sahel app or a traffic office. Our conversion checker shows how Kuwait compares with the other five countries.

The standard school route, fees and documents are the same for every nationality and live on our Kuwait driving licence service page. This page deals with what is particular to Bangladeshi holders.

Guides report that a Kuwait licence for an expat needs a monthly salary of at least KD 600, a university degree or diploma, and about two years of legal residence, with exemptions for professions such as doctors, engineers and teachers. Gulf News reported a KD 400 line in 2018, so the figure has changed over time, and that older report also listed recruited drivers and private domestic helpers among the exempt groups. We could not verify the figure on an MOI page, so treat it as widely reported, and check it at a traffic office.

Now set that against the Bangladesh embassy in Kuwait, which in 2025 issued a minimum wage scale for newly recruited workers, effective for new contracts from 1 August 2025.

The salary that counts is the one on your work permit, not what you earn with overtime. A newly recruited Bangladeshi on the embassy scale is therefore several times below the reported line unless his profession is exempt. Whether a recruited or private driver is still exempt under the current rules is unconfirmed, so a driver should ask the sponsor and traffic office how his case is treated.

One detail softens the picture. The ambassador said the scale applies only to newly recruited workers, not to people already in Kuwait, so a worker who has been in the country for years and has had pay raises may sit well above the embassy minimum. The practical test is simple: read the salary line on your own work permit and compare it with the figure the traffic office quotes you.

Your options are limited but real. Ask whether the permit can be amended to your true pay, which only the employer can do. Check whether your profession is on the exempt list. Wait out the residence period and use the time on theory. Clear any fingerprint or block problem first, since our fingerprint guide shows how to fix it. Do not drive on a BRTA licence as a resident, and do not pay anyone offering a licence without tests, because licences come only from the traffic department.

While you wait, a company driver, a taxi or a ride app is the lawful alternative, and a colleague with a Kuwaiti licence can drive you but you cannot drive his car on your BRTA licence.

The embassy in Kuwait said in August 2025 it looks after more than 300,000 Bangladeshi workers. A July 2025 report said only 4,212 Bangladeshi workers went to Kuwait in 2007, the year visa issuance largely halted, and that for over a decade access was limited. In 2024 Kuwait recruited 670 Bangladeshi nurses under an MoU, and in February 2025 Dhaka and Kuwait discussed more safeguards and wider recruitment. In July 2025 Kuwait deported 127 Bangladeshi workers after a wage protest, according to Arab Times, which is a reminder that a labour dispute on your record can also block licence services.

We found no embassy service that verifies a Bangladeshi licence for Kuwait. The only attestation procedure we found from a Bangladeshi mission is Kuala Lumpur's, which needs BRTA and Foreign Ministry attestation in Dhaka first. If an officer asks for a verified or translated licence, ask the embassy in writing what it can provide.

The Automobile Association of Bangladesh is the only issuer of the Bangladeshi international permit, in Dhaka. It is valid 12 months, cannot be renewed, needs a BRTA licence with a month left, and a licence not found in BRTA's DL Checker app is treated as fake. The UN records show Kuwait acceded to the 1968 Vienna Convention on 14 March 1980, while Bangladesh acceded to the 1949 Geneva Convention on 6 December 1978 and does not appear among parties to the 1968 text. We did not find an official Kuwaiti rule on how long a visitor may use a foreign licence, so confirm with the traffic department.

We found no BRTA service for renewing from Kuwait, so renew on leave. Bangladesh drives on the left and Kuwait on the right, so use the road test failure guide to prepare for junctions and roundabouts.

If you clear the gate, the route is the one every nationality follows: register fingerprints, book through MOI e-services or Sahel, spend about three to four weeks at an approved school, then pass the theory, parking and road tests. Gulf News has reported that expat licences were cut to five years and moved to electronic form, so your result lives in the app. The details are in our Kuwait guide. For a Bangladeshi worker the practical advice is about timing: the residence clock and the permit salary are what you control, so ask your employer about both before you pay a school deposit, because a deposit is rarely refunded once a file is opened.

Our mock tests use 20 questions with 18 correct needed, as set out on our Kuwait pass mark page. Practise with the free Kuwait practice tests, the Hawalli mock test 1 and the printable Kuwait papers.