Faizul Latif Chowdhury (Bengali: ফয়জুল লতিফ চৌধুরী, romanized: Phoyjul Lotiph Cōudhuri, pronounced [fɔedʒul lotif tʃoudʱuɾi]; born 3 June 1959) is a civil servant from Bangladesh.
Chowdhury's professional career started in freelance journalism in the Kishore Bangla, a juvenile weekly published from Dhaka.
However, his literary career commenced when he started to write for the Bangladesh Observer and the daily Purbadesh in his school days, since 1973.
In 1974, for a brief period, he edited the children's page of Banglar Darpan, a Bengali weekly published from Mymensingh since 1972.
Just after finishing education at the Dhaka University, Chowdhury briefly worked at the Planning Division of the Rupali Bank as a senior officer.
He worked at the National Board of Revenue and its attached offices for a long time in different capacities (1983–2000) until he was appointed as a deputy secretary to the Government of Bangladesh in 2001.
He also worked in the Prime Minister's Office as director in charge of the Ministries of Finance, Planning, ERD, IMED, Statistics and IRD.
In 2008, National Board of Revenue of Bangladesh appointed him as research and statistics expert on its Modernization and Automation Project.
He played a vital role in the publication of a monthly literary magazine titled Dwitiyo Chinta (tr.
He also conceived and organized publication of monthly Adhuna (1985–1987), a top-rate literary magazine edited by poet Shamsur Rahman.
He has also translated fiction of Maltese fictionist Oliver Friggieri and, Booker awardee Arundhati Roy of India, among others.
Chowdhury, in 1992, produced an economic model of evasion of customs duty which is the pre-dominant form of tax in low income countries around the world.
He expanded the model by factoring in bribe which leads to accountability conspiracy and, consequently, detection is not reported to the authority.
Reduction of domestic taxes enables the local producer to supply at a lower cost and bring down the price disparity that encourages smuggling.
However, Chowdhury suggested that there is a limit beyond which reducing domestic taxes on production cannot be feasible for adding competitive advantage vis-à-vis smuggled cigarettes.
Notably, Chowdhury modelled the case of the smuggler vis-a-vis the local producer as one of antagonistic duopoly William Niskanen theorized that bureaucrats will always try to maximize their budgets.
Patrick Dunleavy offered an alternative theory of bureau-shaping bureaucracy to explain why officials don't always follow a budget-maximizing strategy.
In the public offices, corruption is demanded by the clients (e.g. a tax-payer) and it is the civil servants who supply it (e.g. a tax collector).
(a) Jibanananda Daser "Aat Bochor Ager Ek Deen (literary criticism)(ed.
), 2000 : Mawla Brothers, Dhaka (e) Amiyo Chakrabartyr Sreshtha Prabandha (Anthology of Essays) (ed.).
(h) Oliver Friggeirie's Koranta and Other Short Stories from Malta (translated) (ed), Desh Prokason, 1998: Dhaka.