March 28, 2024, 2:42 pm


Staff Correspondent

Published:
2020-12-17 21:25:49 BdST

Inefficient bureaucracy, graft major hindrances to doing business in Bangladesh: WEF survey


Inefficient government bureaucracy, corruption and limited access to finance were top three problematic factors for doing business in Bangladesh last year.

The Executive Opinion Survey (EOS) conducted in Bangladesh during the early period of the Covid-19 pandemic has made the observation.

It also shows that access to finance has ‘increasingly become a major business concern for businesses particularly for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)’ and so it has become the third most problematic factor for doing business in the country.

EOS is conducted to prepare a country’s part of the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR), the flagship publication of the World Economic Forum (WEF). GCR 2020 was released globally on Wednesday.

In Bangladesh, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) is the partner organisation of WEF and responsible for preparing the Bangladesh part of the study.

Dr Khondaker Golam Moazzem, research director of CPD, presented the findings and analyses of the GCR 2020 this morning (Wednesday) in Dhaka through a virtual press briefing.

This year’s EOS was conducted amid Covid-19 and so the number of respondents came down to 55 in 2020 from 77 in 2019.

Inadequate infrastructure, which had long been considered one of the top three problematic factors, became the fourth important factor last year, according to the EOS.

Other important factors include inadequate educated labour force and poor work ethic in the labour force, it adds.

“Businesses are increasingly looking for cost-cutting and productivity enhancing measures,” said Dr Moazzem at the virtual press conference. “High tax rates and inadequate educated and skilled labour force are also considered as key problematic factors.”

The majority of governance-related indicators have experienced deterioration during 2019, according to the result of EOS.

Most of the executives, surveyed for the global report, opined that weak public service delivery due to lack of efficiency, transparency and accountability is the major factor responsible for the poor condition of governance in the country.

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