The government of Bangladesh is committed to implementing high-impact regulatory reforms such as streamlining the existing company registration process and reduce administrative costs in the procedures, said Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi.
Minister was addressing a webinar on “Streamlining Company Registration Process in Bangladesh” as Chief Guest on Sunday.
Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD) organised the webinar in collaboration with The Feed the Future Bangladesh Improving Trade and Business Enabling Environment supported by USAID(FtFBITBEE) activity of USAID.
Minister cited the examples of Singapore and Malaysia that have shown remarkable success in simplifying the company registration process, reducing the time to register a company to less than one hour. The Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms (RJSC) of Bangladesh has undergone several reforms and digitalized the registration process, but still, there is room for improvement for which collaboration of both the public and private sector is required.
Abul Kasem Khan, Chairperson, BUILD commenced the program by thanking the Commerce Minister for taking the lead in modernising the Companies Act. RJSC has digitized the registration process along with other services.
He mentioned that BUILD is presenting a survey conducted jointly with FtFBITBEE supported by USAID containing recommendations to reduce the time and costs in the company registration process.
Ferdaus Ara Begum, CEO, BUILD delivered the keynote presentation on ‘Removing Time, Cost and Process related Bottlenecks in Company Registration in Bangladesh’.
She presented the findings of the survey conducted during March-April, 2021 on the companies registered in the country in the past two years.
Igor Gutan, Team Leader, FtFBITBEE said that the study is very important to know about the true cost and time incurred in company registration in the country. If Bangladesh wants to get into the first fifty countries in Doing Business, the country needs to improve its position in terms of time, cost, and number of procedures in company registration.
In the Open Session, Rizwan Rahman, President, DCCI noticed that the cost of company registration process in RJSC ranges from BDT 6000-10,000 is bearable for medium and large industry though it is a bit high for small industry. Third party support is recognised all over the world. We may provide this third party/consultancy system under institutional formation and bring them under tax bracket.
Asifa Aziz, Owner, Yoshi International emphasized that 100% automation in every stage of the office will be business friendly for the companies other wise online services will have no meaning.
Dr Nadia, Director FBCCI requested for both English and Bengali version of Trade license while its renewal as five years as like as passport to encourage people to be under legal coverage.
Tapan Kanti Ghosh, Secretary, Ministry of Commerce, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh mentioned that while a remarkable number of reforms have been made but more needs to be done.
As the Guest of Honor, Marc Shiman (Acting) Chief of Party FtFBITBE suggested that the RJSC should follow best practices and adopt a practical approach to set its future actions to upgrade ranking in Ease of Doing Business Index.
