Methods and Apparatus are provided for downlink retransmission of Code Block Groups (CBGs) when CBG level ACK and NACK feedback is unreliable. A User Equipment (UE) transmits to a Base Station (BS) feedback indicating an Acknowledgement (ACK) or a Negative Acknowledgement (NACK) corresponding to each of received set of CBGs transmitted by the BS to the UE. The BS receives and decodes the feedback and transmits back to the UE information regarding a result of the decoding. The UE, based on the received information, determines whether the BS correctly received and decoded the ACK/NACK feedback, and in some cases, ACKs and NACKs corresponding to which CBGs were incorrectly decoded by the BS. The UE processes retransmitted CBGs received from the BS based on this determination.