DOING BUSINESS RANKING : DCCI urges govt to address challenges identified by WB

The Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Saturday urged the government to quicken regulatory reforms and harmonise business laws to develop doing business scenario in the country as the latest report by the World Bank identified some challenges for doing business in Bangladesh.
The WB report titled ‘Doing Business-2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency’ released on Wednesday showed that Bangladesh slipped two points to 174 in the ranking among 189 countries from 172 in the previous year.
At a press conference on the WB’s report at the chamber building in the capital, the DCCI expressed grave concern over the World Bank’s cost of doing business ranking.
DCCI president Hossain Khaled said the WB identified the areas where Bangladesh needs development in policy reform for doing business and now the government should take the issues into consideration.
‘If we fail to bridge the gap [policy mismatch] and identify areas to reduce the cost of doing business, both domestic and foreign investors would be discouraged,’ he said.
He said that Bangladesh had recently been graduated to lower middle income country and aimed to get the middle income country status by the year 2021.
‘To achieve the goal we have to increase our position and improve the image of our country,’ the DCCI president said.
Citing the doing business ranking, Khaled said Bangladesh has made significant improvement in getting electricity for the domestic use but progress is insignificant for the industry.
The land registration process in the country is very much cumbersome and complicated and the total process has got eight phases to go through taking around 244 days, the DCCI president said.
Demanding simplification of the process of trade licence application by digitalising, the DCCI chief said that the starting business ranging from registration to trade licence required minimum 20 days that pushed down Bangladesh by 6 points in the ranking in 2016.
The DCCI made a set of recommendations including reduction in time for electricity connection, introduction of computerised land information and easing the process of registration, introduction of private credit bureau and public credit registry and ensuring rules of law in contract enforcement particularly in public procurement.
Bangladesh needs to reduce the number of export documents from 12 to 7 as in China the number is 7 whereas in India it is only 3, said Khaled.
In this regard he proposed online document submission system in registration and licensing process.
‘But, above all, we have to remove our procedural delay and complicacies for easing cost of doing business. If the procedure, regulatory framework, delay in getting licence could be reduced, new entrepreneurs will come into business more,’ he said.
DCCI senior vice-president Humayun Rashid and vice-president Md Shoaib Choudhury and BUILD chief executive officer Ferdaus Ara Begum were present, among others, in the press conference.

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