It is disturbing to note that even though the government claims that it has taken up reform measures to liberalise the business policy, the country is still among the most difficult places to start and run a business. According to World Bank's Ease of Doing Business index for this year Bangladesh ranks 176th out of 190 countries. This is the lowest ranking for a South Asian nation. The WB report sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-sized business when complying with relevant regulations. Even though the country’s ranking has moved one notch up from that in the previous year, its score in seven out of the ten indicators has deteriorated this time.
The government must take every measure
necessary to make sure that the liberal business
policies and plans it has adopted are aided by
field-level actions befitting the policies on paper
However, it would not be justified if we say that the government is totally unaware of the situation and that it is not at all trying to improve the prevailing sorry state. In fact, the incumbent government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been pursuing reforms to improve Bangladesh's ranking by developing indicator-specific action plans. For an instance, understanding the fact that bureaucratic lethargy and lackadaisicalness in establishing a new enterprise has long been an issue that creates a bad impression among private investors, particularly those from foreign countries, which eventually deprive the country of the desired investment, Bangladesh Investment Development Authority has planned to introduce one-stop service (OSS) for investors in place of the present multi-stop service deliveries. It has been learnt that after the introduction of OSS investors will be provided with some 15 different services at a single place thereby save huge amount of time and make the procedure more transparent and hassle-free. The move to introducing such service has been praised from every quarter.
However, what is annoying that such pragmatic initiatives cannot result in any noteworthy improvement because of limited progress in execution. Therefore, it is very much required that the government and its relevant functionaries show a high degree of commitment to take every measure necessary to make sure that the liberal business policies and plans adopted by the government are aided by field-level actions befitting the policies on paper.