Ease tax, property registration for better business: Workshop

A four-day business workshop in Dhaka has called for addressing the issues of insolvency, property registration procedure and easier tax regime for improving Bangladesh’s business ranking globally.

Improvement in the country’s position in the cost of doing business will create an image as an investment friendly destination for potential local and foreign investors, the participants observed.

And, they added, efforts to do so can also prove to be a catalyst for the government of Bangladesh to modernise the overall regulatory quality and governance.

The workshop discussed ways and means on how to improve Bangladesh’s global doing business ranking, placing the country within 100 from the current position of 176 by 2021, said a news release on Tuesday.

The workshop came out with detailed methodology of doing business and held targeted discussions on the identified roles and possible reform actions by the implementing agencies.

The Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) in partnership with the Trade and Competitiveness (T&C) Global Practice of the World Bank Group organised the technical workshop on ‘Doing Business (DB) Reforms’ on 10-13 April.

It was a platform policymakers and stakeholders from 40 government and selected private sector agencies to discuss feasibility of the recommended reforms.

It called for addressing legal and regulatory reforms and thus develop a disaggregated doing business reform action plan outlining targeted reforms that will include measurable actions with responsible agencies and clear timeframes through consultation with government and the private sector.

Bangladesh needs to significantly strengthen its investment competitiveness through increasing private investment in productive sectors and diversification of the export basket to increase investments critical to achieving the required 7-8 per cent sustained growth.

Participants include representatives from  the law ministry, local government division, the registrar of Joint Stock Companies & Firms, the National Board of Revenue, Bangladesh Bank, the finance ministry, the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK), the Chittagong Development Authority (CDA), the environment department, the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA), the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA), the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA), the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA), the Bangladesh International Arbitration Center (BIAC), the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Bangladesh, the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI), the Foreign Investors’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), and the Bangladesh Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BWCCI).