The Covid-19 pandemic has a major setback to individual company level performances in terms of production, export, import and employment in Bangladesh.
About 40 to 50 per cent of businessmen, in their responses to a perception survey, indicated that covid-19 has ‘caused a significant decline in the performances of their enterprises.’
Respondents of the survey, however, shared their views during the March-May period of the current year when the Covid-related scenario has evolved in the country.
Around 46.70 per cent of entrepreneurs mentioned or indicated that a major adverse impact happened in their company’s production while 41.0 per cent respondents indicated ‘high’ adverse impact on their import.
Again, about 41.0 per cent exporter-respondents indicated that their companies confronted ‘high’ level of deterioration in export during the pandemic period.
The survey was conducted by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) under its Bangladesh Business Environment Study. It is an annual exercise of the think-tank beside its work on conducting the Executive Opinion Survey (EOS) for the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR).
The GCR is the flagship publication of the World Economic Forum (WEF), where CPD is the partner organisation which has been carrying out the Bangladesh part of the global report since 2001.
CPD unveils the survey findings this morning in Dhaka through a virtual press briefing.
The perception survey under Bangladesh Business Environment Study also showed that the ‘disruptions in the domestic and international supply chains caused squeezing of business operations, closing down of factories and laying off of workers.’
The entrepreneurs, however, opined that public policy support under the stimulus packages helped them to address their cash constraints during this period.
Nevertheless, many of them mentioned that the packages have limited coverage for the most needy and marginalised sections of businesses.
