A WORLD Economic Forum’s (WEF) report released in Bangladesh on Wednesday said Bangladesh has moved two notches up in this year’s Global Competitiveness Index, riding on progress in managing the macro-economy, health, education and infrastructure. The country’s position stood at 107 in 2015-16 from 109 last year among 140 countries. Its overall score stood at 3.8 points on a 1 to 7 points scale.
But the report was however equally critical on corruption, poor governance and political uncertainty as affecting investment and growth. Had there been less corruption and higher stability in which people could feel free from risks in making investments, the country’s overall economic growth and business outlook would have been much better and competitiveness higher. The opportunity cost which means we are failing to achieve what we are capable to achieve is still much bigger compared to the growth potentials that Bangladesh economy now enjoys in the hand of a very dynamic entrepreneurial community which has scores of businessmen who are capable of taking global challenges to stay in competitive business in export markets.
It has quite fairly pointed out shortcoming in the areas of good governance, rules of law and reforms in financial sector, capital market and labour laws. These are some areas; which are highly critical to accelerate growth. Moreover, private sector’s capacity remained largely unutilized for want of low cost loans where investment also remained overshadowed by rampant corruption in banks and government offices. Investors are failing to take up big project handicapped by uncertain politics and banks liquidity crisis. Banks syndication is not working in this sluggish business environment.
Moreover poor selection of public sector project essentially on political consideration, anomaly in civil administration, extreme political discrimination to certain section of business in using government incentives and lawlessness are some factors holding back the higher growth prospects that the economy is missing. The Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in publishing the report said many countries have leapfrogged in the ranking whereas Bangladesh has moved only two notches which should have been much higher. It is still much lower from India which stays at 55th place from last year’s 71st. Sri Lanka was ranked 68th from last year’s 73rd. Only Pakistan stayed below Bangladesh at 126 position.
The report praised Bangladesh’s success in health, primary education, technological readiness and business sophistication. But looking fairly at those areas, health and primary education are beset with rampant corruption where at least 2 to 3 percent of the GDP growth is missing every year from misuse of funds. We believe Bangladesh must go for massive training of its workers and managerial people to achieve higher productivity to ride on higher competitiveness. It is key to higher growth.
