[5][6][7] In October the following year, ৳1,761 crore were earmarked for the project by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council.

[5][6][7] However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) was unable to conduct the census, delaying the exercise to October 2021.

[5][6] As the October 2021 deadline approached, the BBS still was not fully prepared to conduct the census, as the government refused to purchase 395,000 tablet computers which were meant to be used in the enumeration.

[5][6] The BBS had made changes to the 2018 master plan in June, shifting the method of the census from manual to digital, which was expected to reduce the cost of the operation by 11% to ৳1,575 crore.

The exercise was also the country's first digital census,[1][2][3] making use of GIS mapping, tablet computers, and a Computer-assisted personal interviewing system to record data.