The government has undertaken initiatives to reform the local business environment. These efforts have helped Bangladesh emerge in the list of top 20 improvers in Doing Business 2020, a report published by the World Bank. The Doing Business 2020 study shows that developing economies are slowly but surely catching up with developed economies in ease of doing business. The gap still remains wide. An entrepreneur in a low income economy typically spends around 50 percent of the country’s per-capita income to launch a company, compared with just 4.2 percent for an entrepreneur in a high income economy. It takes nearly six times as long on average to start a business in the economies ranked in the bottom 50 as in the top 20.The report utilizes very simple methods to calculate which economies improve the ease of doing business score the most. First, it selects the economies that in

2018/19 implemented regulatory reforms making it easier to do business in 3 or more of the 10 topics included in this year’s aggregate ease of doing business score.

Now these categories also have sub categories which indicate more specific regions of operation, but let us stick with the broader categories for the sake of this discussion.

Doing Business Rankings: Bangladesh 

According to the report, forty-two economies meet this criterion: Armenia; Azerbaijan; The Bahamas;

Bahrain; Bangladesh; Cabo Verde; China; Colombia; the Democratic Republic of Congo; Djibouti; the Arab

Republic of Egypt; Eswatini; Gabon; India; Indonesia; Israel; Jordan; Kenya; Kosovo; Kuwait; the Kyrgyz Republic; Mauritius; Moldova; Morocco; Myanmar; Nigeria; Oman; Pakistan; Philippines; Qatar; the Russian

Federation; Rwanda; Saudi Arabia; Serbia; Tajikistan; Togo; Tunisia; Ukraine; United Arab Emirates; United States; Uzbekistan; and Zimbabwe. Second, the report sorts these economies on the increase of their ease of business doing score over the previous year. The scores for both years are calculated using the same macroeconomic data (such as income per capita and currency conversion rates) to remove the effect of changes in these variables.

According to the World Bank, it is now easier for entrepreneurs to start a business and to obtain amenities like credit and electrical connections in Bangladesh. Among other initiatives, Bangladesh has reduced the name clearance fee for registration of new companies, reduced registration fee calculations based on share capital and removed digital certification fees altogether. Bangladesh made getting electricity faster by investing in digitization and human capital at the utility. It also made getting electricity less costly by reducing the amount of the security deposit for a new connection. Bangladesh improved access to credit information by expanding the coverage of the credit information bureau.

In October 2018, Bangladesh was ranked 176 among 190 countries and in just a year, it rose to 168; hence its inclusion in the top 20 improvers list. The government wants to upgrade the country’s position among the best 100 within 2021. How likely such an achievement will be remains to be seen, however it promises further improvements in the years ahead.