As things stand, Bangladesh already ranks incredibly low in metrics such as the global Ease of Doing Business Index.
With companies across the spectrum finding it difficult to set up shop in our nation, clearly the trend forward should be for the administration to lower the barriers to entry when it comes to encouraging more business on our shores.
And that is yet another notch on the suffocating belt that the proposed Data Protection Act (DPA) can now claim, as it can stand to greatly, adversely impact foreign investment in Bangladesh.
According to a recent panel of experts and foreign delegates, including the UK high commissioner and US ambassador, the proposed DPA would not only discourage US and UK companies from investing in Bangladesh, but also force many existing ones to leave the country. Which would, in turn, have over 2,000 startups to be put out of business and digital services used by citizens all over the nation would be rendered useless.
As a publication we have spoken at length about why the proposed DPA is not defined well enough to tackle the issue of data protection and privacy and indeed has far too many holes in its understanding of such topics that leave a lot of room for abuse. Now that we have expert opinion on why the act also stands to significantly reduce the amount of foreign investment we get, which is already not nearly as much as it could be, we hope the administration can be more pragmatic in its approach to such laws going forward.
Bangladesh still has a long way to go before it can make its business environment compliant with international standards -- corruption needs to be weeded out, our business laws need to be revamped with the involvement of all stakeholders, and we definitely need to nip problematic laws in the bud before they make things any worse than they already are.
