Bangladesh progresses eight points

It is heartening to see Bangladesh achieve an eight-place leap in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business 2020 index. In the latest edition of the study the country scored 168, as opposed to 176 in the previous year's index. The index is based on a cluster of regulations affecting 10 areas of life of a business: starting a business, obtaining construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, accessing credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency.

Although it is a major improvement for Bangladesh, the achievement is overshadowed by how other Saarc nations have done. India, for instance, improved its performance by 14 points to 63rd place, Pakistan progressed 28 points to 108th place and Nepal secured 94th position, with an improvement of 16 points. Indeed, Bangladesh's rank is lower than all its Saarc neighbours except Afghanistan. That said, what is important is to point out that Bangladesh's progress was made as it made reforms on three fronts: obtaining an electrical connection in Dhaka; lessening cost of setting up a business by reducing fees on registration and name registration fees; and removal of certifying fee for digital certificates.  

While the progress is encouraging, much more needs to be done. When the bigger picture is taken in to account, our rank (168) remains well behind all competitor countries in the region. Bangladesh still lags behind in crucial areas like enforcing contracts (189), registering property (184), trading across borders (176), etc. Despite improvements, a Bangladeshi company must wait an average of 115 days to get electricity connection. What it all boils down to is that we need to expedite reforms and put them on a fast track because every other nation, which are our competitors in the export arena, are moving ahead with regulatory changes to help businesses set up faster than us. Scoring a better score in indices like this one has a direct correlation to attracting foreign investment and though we congratulate the government for finally getting the ball rolling in the right direction, it is not time to start patting ourselves on the back just yet.