Bangladesh needs to improve in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index significantly, from the current ranking of 176th to 75th in the next five years, to graduate from least developed country (LDC) status to developing country, a top government official has said.
“We have set criteria for improving our ranking in global index of ease of doing business from the current 176th to 150th by 2021, 100th by 2023 and 75th by 2024,” Dr Shamsul Alam, member, General Economics Division (GED), Planning Commission, said yesterday.
He was speaking as special guest at the launching of a workshop styled "National Workshop on International Indexes in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)" at the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
He said Bangladesh currently maintained only 70 indexes against required 232 on achieving the SDGs and upgrading the status.
"We have a lot of things to do. We must work hard to improve in the areas of ease of doing business, global competitiveness index, human capital development, ICT, e-commerce and cyber security," he said.
In the latest Global Competitiveness Report 2019 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) released on October 9, Bangladesh has been placed 105th among 141 countries, relegated from 103rd in the previous report.
Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a local think tank, released the report on behalf of the WEF.
The CPD said the country got stuck in skills, labour market and business dynamism, while Bangladesh’s business competitiveness became entangled with traditional and emerging challenges.
Lack of improvement in governance and institutions, poor infrastructure, financial system and business operations were perennial problems, the report pointed out.
Planning Minister MA Mannan said some laws were largely responsible for creating fresh poverty.
"Application of some laws is responsible for creating poverty in the country. For example, there are many water bodies (khal, beel, haor) in the rural areas. Poor people living around used to depend on fishing on the khals and beels. Laws were enacted to lease those out in exchange of a small amount of money for the state exchequer. Such lease restricts access of people to khals and beels. As a result, they have lost livelihood and source of protein free of cost," Mannan said.
“Likewise, people living near forests have lost access. Earlier, they enjoyed easy access to forests, collected wood or dead trees, branches and bushes and sold them in nearby bazars and buy foods for family. Now, you will see armed security people guarding the forests."
He said the laws regarding protection of forests and water bodies like haors, khals and beels left the poor to become poorer as they lost the natural livelihood sources.
The workshop was addressed, among others, by Principal Secretary to Prime Minister's office Md Nojibur Rahman, National Coordinator for SDGs Abul Kalam Azad and UNDP Resident Representative Sudipto Mukerjee.
Secretary of the Statistics and Information Division Sourendra Nath Chakraborty chaired the occasion.