Bangladesh advances one notch on EDBI

Bangladesh ranked 176th in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index (EDBI)—an index that measures the performance of some 190 countries in the world. The "Doing Business 2019" report, however, found Bangladesh trailing all other South Asian nations. The index is based on 10 broad pillars and the main areas where we have done better than last year are: getting electricity (six points up), registering property (two points up) and paying taxes (one point up).

Unfortunately, we have done poorly in other areas. For starting a business, our rank in 2018 is 138 (131 in 2017); for dealing with construction permits, our rank is 138 (130 in 2017); for access to credit managed, our rank is 161 (two notches down from 2017); for protecting minority investors, we slid 13 spots from the preceding year to 89; and in trading across borders, we are down three spots to 176. Although we did better than last year with a measly upward movement by one notch (176th in 2019 as opposed to 177th in 2018), the country ranked lowest in South Asia. In fact, war-torn Afghanistan managed to rank at 167, nine spots above Bangladesh. Even Myanmar with all its ethnic tensions outranked us by five points!

Reforms are sorely needed to expedite the various steps involved in the lifecycle of a business and we have consistently been coming up short in some crucial areas. As we have said in the past, if the country is truly serious about attracting FDI, then the cost and time for starting and doing business must be reduced.