ED: Eliminating inefficiency from our government

It is unsurprising to learn that experts have identified inefficiency in government administration as the number one obstacle for doing business in the country.

Considering that Bangladesh has dreams of earning middle-income status, such inefficiency will not do, and we must do everything in our power to ensure that our governmental institutions, which provide essential public services for doing business, do so with the highest levels of efficiency to create an environment that encourages local businesses and foreign investment.

At the root of this inefficiency lies corruption, which spreads and affects every sector of business, such as the current weak state of the banking sector, weak corporate governance, lack of unskilled labour, and poor application of regulatory framework, among others, and create an environment unsuitable for doing business.

While Bangladesh has made great progress in the last decade and shown impressive recovery during the coronavirus pandemic, we must understand that all of this progress can at any moment fall apart if we allow corruption to exist to the extent it does, infusing poison in every single sector of our economy.

This, in turn, goes on to affect the millions of hard-working people on whose backs the economy is running, taking away from them whatever dream they might have had of providing for themselves and their family, and for improving their lives overall.

Our attention to corrupt practices and subsequent intolerance for them will remain an indicator for whether we value the people who call this country their home and create a nation which continues to move sustainably up the economic ladder.