South Asian rankings for business-friendly rules

Out of four major Bangladesh cities covered in the study, Dhaka ranks best in providing most business-friendly regulations, as measured by the Doing Business followed by Khulna, Chittagong, while Bogra imposes most complex and costly barriers.  It also revealed that as a region, South Asia performs comparatively well in business start-up and protecting investors.

The report finds that 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 10 Doing Business indicators – Bangladesh can still do much better.

Caralee McLiesh, an author of the Doing Business in South Asia report said that “Bangladesh could jump in the international rankings it is 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 Maldives, behind”.

Local regulations and different implementation of national-level regulations cause large differences in the ease of doing business among Bangladesh 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).