Starting is no less a difficult and time-consuming part of a business in Bangladesh than actually doing it. And that is more so for a foreigner who wants to start any business venture in this country. But that is not due to any lack of cooperation from any quarters. In fact, it is completing the necessary paperwork before starting a business that is actually exhausting. One has to run from one office to another to meet the most basic requirements like obtaining a licence, having a certificate issued, or getting a company registered. And if the entrepreneur in question is planning to set up a factory, then the challenges before her/him will only grow bigger.
So, to facilitate the inception of a business, be it a trading or a manufacturing venture, it would be important to ensure that the information and forms on all the procedures for the preparation of papers are available on a single platform. In this connection, a report was carried by the Monday's issue of this paper. It was about a study that a local policy think tank, in collaboration with an international development partner, carried out on the institutional, operational and legal requirements that entrepreneurs have to meet to start a business venture in Bangladesh in certain sectors of the industry. The industrial sectors studied include the readymade garment (RMG), pharmaceuticals, leather and food processing. The good news is that the study was well worth the effort as one of the end products of the exercise is a well-designed web portal. It would, it is believed, help would-be entrepreneurs to easily access all the necessary information about establishing a factory and the processes of getting a licence, a certificate or a registration for the purpose, especially, in the aforementioned industrial sectors.
And in the light of the said study outcome, experts and business entrepreneurs at a recent discussion event in the city were for a cleanup of the existing tardy and complex procedural tangles in the way of starting a new business setup, a factory, in particular. There is no denying the fact that the government has so far taken various steps including introduction of a one-stop service by the Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) as well as other pro-business initiatives. Even so, such services are not well-organised to meet the specific needs of business ventures of different categories. For example, the needs of a well-established business and those of a beginner are quite different. And the problems get really difficult, especially, for foreign entrepreneurs as the number of desks they have to visit are too many. Worse, such visit to a particular desk may not be a one-off. And things border on the absurd when they are handed forms printed in Bangla to fill in.
So, the case for an online facility in the shape of a webpage containing all the required information and guidelines for setting up a factory needs no further explaining. However, the webpage so designed by a private initiative cannot be said to be exhaustive or foolproof. So, there is ample room for the web portal's further improvement. New features, for example, could be added to it, while inessential ones removed. Finally, the government should extend its total support to the web portal so designed to facilitate starting up of a factory by fresh entrepreneurs. The sooner it is launched for its potential users the better.