Bangladesh ranked 125th out of 132 countries on the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) for 2016, five places up from last year.
The country, however, is at the bottom among Asia-Pacific countries as the less attractive place in the region to launch a start-up in the New Year, according to the annual report from the US-based Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute released on Friday.
The United States came in first in the report, followed by Canada, Australia, Denmark and Sweden.
While scoring 15.2 out of a perfect 100 in the GEI, Bangladesh registered 14.6, 21 and 10 in the three sub-indices of entrepreneurial attitudes, entrepreneurial abilities and entrepreneurial aspirations, respectively.
These scores showed that Bangladesh is the worst performer in the Asia-Pacific region and globally. Its scores show marginal difference among the countries that are at the bottom in GEI ranking.
The bottom countries are Burkina Faso (126th with 15.1 points, Madagascar (127th with 14.6 points Sierra Leone (128th with 14.3 points, Mauritania (129th with 13.2 points, Malawi (130th with 12.4 points, Burundi (131st 11.9 points) and Chad (132nd with 9.9 points).
The striking feature in the Asia-Pacific region is its diversity in terms of economic and entrepreneurship development.
On one hand, the region contains some of the world’s leading entrepreneurial economies such as Australia (3rd globally), Taiwan (6th), and Singapore (11th).
On the other hand, the region also contains global laggards such as Myanmar (117th), Indonesia (103th), Pakistan (109th) and Bangladesh (125th).
The bureaucratic red tape is common in India, Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Myanmar and Bangladesh, which constrains entrepreneurial activity in those countries.
The Asia-Pacific region’s weakest aspect is Attitude toward entrepreneurship, whereas Abilities and Aspirations are almost at the same level with one another.
However, there is a great internal variance within the region: Australia’s Attitude score stands at 75.2, whereas Cambodia’s 10.6, which is the lowest in the global GEI ranking.
There is a similar variance with other sub-indices; for example, Aspirations scores range 49 from Taiwan’s high of 81.6 to Bangladesh’s low of 10.0. The big challenge for these countries appear to be continuing to enhance institutional and regulatory conditions for entrepreneurship.
For the weakest economies, such as Cambodia, Laos and Bangladesh, strengthening the institutional foundations for entrepreneurial activity and gradually developing human capital and physical infrastructure are required.
Factor-driven countries with low GDPs, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uganda, and other poor African countries, are at the bottom of the entrepreneurship ranking, as expected. At the same time, these countries’ entrepreneurial performance is the least unbalanced.
The economic potential of the Asia-Pacific region that includes some of the poorest countries in the world, such as Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Bangladesh lies with its large and overall quite young population, notably in the developing Asian economies.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
