Washington DC, February 13, 2007
– The World
Bank and its private sector
arm, IFC,
released today a new report entitled Doing
Business in South Asia 2007
, which, for the first time, includes subnational data from Bangladesh.
The report finds that out of the four major Bangladeshi cities covered
in the study, Dhaka has the most business-friendly regulations,
as measured by the Doing
Business reports. By contrast,
Bogra imposes the most complex and costly administrative barriers, while
Chittagong and Khulna rank in between.
The report compares business regulations in the World Bank’s South Asia
region with 175 economies around the world. The top-ranked countries in
the region are the Maldives (53) and Pakistan (74), followed by Bangladesh
(88), Sri Lanka (89), Nepal (100), India (134), Bhutan (138), and Afghanistan
(162). This year, Bangladesh implemented reforms to simplify property registration.
Doing Business in South Asia 2007 is the third report in a series of
reports on the region based on the methodology of the annual global Doing
Business report. Doing Business tracks a set of regulatory indicators
related to business start-up, operation, trade, payment of taxes, and closure
by measuring the time and cost associated with various government requirements.
It does not track variables such as macroeconomic policy, quality of infrastructure,
currency volatility, investor perceptions, or crime rates.
Bangladesh recently improved the environment for businesses by introducing
the land registration act (in force since July 1, 2005) to reduce fraud
in land tenure. Despite improvements in the area of property registration—one
of the 10 Doing Business indicators—Bangladesh can still do much
better.
“Bangladesh could jump in the international
rankings if it simply adopted
the best practices in business regulation that already exist within the
country—from 88th to 62nd on the global Doing Business rankings.
This would leave all other countries in the region, except the Maldives,
behind,” said Caralee McLiesh, an author of the Doing Business in South
Asia report.
Local regulations and different implementation of national-level regulations
cause large differences in the ease of doing business among Bangladeshi
cities. For example, in Dhaka it takes 13 procedures and 185 days to obtain
a license, compared to 150 days and 15 procedures in Chittagong, and 146
days and 14 procedures in Bogra. Within Bangladesh, it is fastest to start
a businesses in Khulna and Bogra (30 days), compared to Dhaka and Chittagong,
where it takes a week longer (37 days).
“Although the variations within the country are less significant for Bangladesh
than for India and Pakistan, local authorities can still learn from each
other in several areas of business regulation. In Khulna, for example,
resolving a commercial dispute through the courts is faster than other
cities, but at 1,373 days it still requires almost four years,” said Simon
Bell, World Bank Manager for Financial and Private Sector Development in
South Asia.
| Indicator
| City with best score on
indicator
|
1
| Starting a business
| Bogra, Khulna
|
2
| Dealing with licenses
| Bogra
|
3
| Employing workers
| No regional variation
|
4
| Registering property
| Bogra, Chittagong
|
5
| Getting credit
| No regional variation
|
6
| Protecting investors
| No regional variation
|
7
| Paying taxes
| No regional variation
|
8
| Trading across borders
| Chittagong
|
9
| Enforcing contracts
| Khulna
|
10
| Closing a business
| Dhaka |
Current global ranking of
of Bangladesh: 88
|
Hypothetical ranking after adopting
Bangladesh best practices: 62 |
###
The Doing Business project is based on the efforts of more than
5,000 local experts – business consultants, lawyers, accountants, government
officials, and leading academics around the world, who provide methodological
support and review. The data, methodology, and names of contributors are
publicly available online.
For more information on the Doing Business report series, please
visit: www.doingbusiness.org.
For copies of the Doing Business in South Asia report, please visit:
www.doingbusiness.org/southasia.
|