Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD), a public-private policy reforms body said it is high time for the key stakeholders to comprehend the complex and multifaceted nature of the development challenge in a bid to designing better policies based on public-private collaboration and pondering action to restore confidence in the possibilities of continued economic progress.
BUILD made the comments on the recently launched Global Competitiveness Report 2017–2018.
It said the Global Competitiveness Report 2017–2018 comes out at a time when the global economy has started to show signs of recovery in general and the economy of Bangladesh’s prospects for continued economic development look very promising in particular.
Asif Ibrahim, founder chairman and adviser to BUILD said, "BUILD has been relentlessly working with the PMO to address the issue of policy reforms since 2011 for creating a better investment climate. It's good to see our efforts translating into our improvement in the global competitiveness ranking. BUILD will continue to work closely with the bureaucracy through structured PPD to improve our position further".
"Bangladesh’s reform movement started in 1990 through sound macroeconomic policies, investment in education, drawing upon communication technology and maintaining relative political stability, we should strive to boost private investment by reforming business regulations, mitigating infrastructure deficiencies keeping prime focus on skill development as the key to achieving competitiveness", said Ferdaus Ara Begum, CEO of BUILD.
Out of 137 economies, it is seen that competitiveness has improved across most countries in South Asia in particular in Bhutan (82nd, up 15) and Nepal (88th, up 10). On a similarly positive trend, Bangladesh has positioned 99th place (up seven) and scored 3.91 remarkably improving its scores in two pillars such as market size (38th) and macroeconomic environment (56th) despite extreme headwinds.
"Despite our gradual development and positive trend, we must need to look at few pillars Bangladesh performs poorly on higher education and training (117th) and technological readiness (120th). The Government needs to consider holistic approach in order to tackle the problematic factors like corruption, inadequate supply of infrastructure, inefficient government bureaucracy, inadequately educated workforce, poor work ethic in national labour force, access to financing and policy instability among others," the BUILD commented.
-rmc//
