Bangladesh is an increasingly difficult country to do business in, according to a new World Bank report.
The country’s global ranking in ease of doing business slid to 174th out of 189 countries, dropping one place from 2015’s 173rd and 59 notches from 2014’s 130th place.
The Doing Business Report 2016, the World Bank’s flagship report on the business friendliness of the world’s economies, released yesterday, found that Bangladesh was down in eight of 10 indicators of the ease of doing business. The country’s performance was unchanged in one indicator and had improved in another.
The annual report, now in its 13th year, looks at the regulatory environment for small and medium-sized companies to see how it hampers or helps them conduct business, from starting up and paying taxes to registering property and trading across borders.
The ranking is based on the business environment in the capital Dhaka and the port city of Chittagong.
For starting a business, Bangladesh’s rank slipped to 117 in 2016 from 115 the year before.
As far as getting electricity is concerned, the country is the lowest performer among the surveyed economies, coming in dead last at 189. For registering property, the country slipped into last place from its previous spot in 188th place.
For enforcing contracts, the country’s ranking remained unchanged near the bottom of the pile, at 188.
For dealing with construction permits, the country improved its rank to 118 from 144.
But the report noted that the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in April 2013, which claimed more than 1,000 lives, resulted from a lack of quality control mechanisms in the construction sector.
The building was constructed without authorisation on a pond, then converted without permission from commercial to industrial use, then extended three floors beyond what was specified in the original building permit.
Moreover, the builders used substandard construction materials, which led to an overload of the building’s structure exacerbated by vibrations from its generators.
Since the Rana Plaza disaster, Bangladesh has sought assistance from the World Bank Group to strengthen its construction permit system.
For the protection of minority shareholders, Bangladesh came in at 88th, down 45 rungs from 43rd place last year.
Indicators such as getting credit, paying taxes, trading across borders and resolving insolvency also remained big concerns.
Among South Asian countries, India ranked 130th, Pakistan 138th, Sri Lanka 107th, Nepal 99th and the Maldives 128th.
There were barely any changes in the report’s top 10 ranking compared to last year. Singapore topped the ranking again, followed by New Zealand, Denmark, South Korea, Hong Kong, Britain and the United States.
Source: New Age
