The state entity designed to draw foreign investment is going to shape the plan to place Bangladesh among the top 100 countries in the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ rankings in order to make it an attractive destination for global businesses.
Senior officials of the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) will sit with related ministries and businessmen on Saturday to devise plans to meet lofty ambitions of being seen as business-friendly.
“Our target is to push Bangladesh among the top 100 countries in the ‘ease of doing business’ index and take the GDP growth rate to double digit (10 percent),” BIDA Director Tauhidur Rahman Khan told bdnews24.com on Thursday.
“If we can do this, it will be a revolution for us in the ‘ease of doing business’ index,” he added.
The ‘doing business’ report, initiated in 2002, reviews business regulations and their implementation across 190 countries.
BIDA, at its first board meeting chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Nov 9, took ‘a number of’ decisions on how to push Bangladesh into a niche among countries with double-digit positions (10 to 99) in the ‘doing businesses’ index within 2020, Tauhidur said.
He also said a task force headed by Finance Minister AMA Muhith had been formed in line with the decisions taken at the BIDA board meeting. The task force has already got down to business.
The joint meeting was planned by the BIDA board 10 days ago and will be held at Sonargaon Hotel from 4pm to 7pm.
Abul Kalam Azad, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, BIDA Executive Chairman Kazi Aminul Islam, top officials of several ministries and departments, and representatives of top business bodies, including FBCCI, will attend the meeting.
A senior economist from the World Bank Group headquarters in Washington DC will present the keynote paper.
The World Bank has placed Bangladesh in the 176th position among 190 countries in its Doing Business 2017 report. Bangladesh was ranked 178 last year.
The study analyses the effectiveness of government regulations in promoting a positive business environment.
The study ranks the business environment of a country based on 11 indicator sets: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and labour market regulations.
Bangladesh has jumped one place in the registering property indicator and two places in the resolving insolvency indicator.
But it has plummeted seven places in starting a business, five in getting credit, one in protecting minority investors and three in paying taxes. The other indicator rankings have remained unchanged.
Despite gaining two spots, Bangladesh lags behind most other SAARC countries, managing only to overtake war-torn Afghanistan.
Now BIDA wants to plan the moves to push Bangladesh at least 76 places ahead in the index within 2020, when the Seventh Five-Year Plan draws to an end.
The entity hopes Saturday’s meeting will help generate awareness in the private sector on the need to improve the investment environment.
BIDA was formed through the merger of the Privatisation Commission and the Board of Investment. Till its first board meeting on Nov 9, the board of directors of the now-defunct BOI had not met for six years.
At the meeting of the BIDA board of directors, the prime minister approved a proposal to take Bangladesh forward in the ‘ease of doing business’ index.
In its first move, BIDA Chairman Kazi Amin is sitting with the representatives of relevant government bodies, including the commerce ministry, and businesses.
source: bdnews24