A risky country for Business

Bangladesh ranks among riskiest countries for business

To all woe and worry, are times Bangladesh has set its landing page in, in an international business homepage. Recent flout of events striking fear in all respects of the country, not only the restaurant/cafe business, is at the heart of the all the upheaval.

Rated by a London-based risk analysis firm, the Civil Unrest Index lists Bangladesh at No.6 of the top 200 countries, staging public protests, mass demonstrations, ethnic or religious violence, which aggravates Bangladesh's image further. Previously, the World Bank listed Bangladesh the 174th easiest country to do business, revealing the difficulty businessmen face in this economy.

Plea for incentives - E-commerce

Withdraw all taxes on e-commerce: FBCCI
With the speculation of the possible arrival of e-commerce giants Amazon and Alibaba in Bangladesh in 2017, the domestic sector is still at a nascent stage of development. This thought was shared by the president of the E-commerce association, E-CAB, at a discussion on the aspect of IT in the proposed budget for FY17, at the FBCCI office. The FBCCI president also compared the robust and sustained growth of the RMG sector, which was possible only through continuous government support. He urged this to be replicated to the E-commerce sector as well, a USD$500 bn market globally, with healthy allocations for entrepreneurial loans and waver until of taxes until 2024.

Warnings for ill-businesses

NBR: New budget to be dreadful for dishonest business

The NBR is officially coming down on mal-practicing businesses, as stated by the NBR Chariman. The statement directly implied NBR's monitoring will be fortified and it will be reflected in the upcoming Budget. Policy measures will be present as always for incentivizing honest businesses, while serving dishonest ones severely.

Bond facilities - NBR policy changes

NBR plans policy changes to check misuse of bond facilities
To battle duty evasion exercised in bonded warehouse facilities the government has detected the incapacity in the existing system to deal with this. Thus, before the next fiscal, the NBR has planned initiatives to ensure bonded warehouse facilities are not extended to regular imports. It has planned to reduce or withdraw VAT on the items under this facilities. Only the 5% duty will be kept and the 15% VAT will be abolished.

Mis-use of bonded warehouse

Businessmen concerned over misuse of duty-free bond facility

Those businesses which are enjoying bonded warehouse facility, which is the importing duty free raw materials for export oriented production processes, are mis-using the aid. Instead of utilizing imported materials for processing export commodities, they are selling it to the local market. This is hitting small traders hard. The FBCCI president alerted traders to remain vigilant. An unchecked and ongoing process, which costs the government Tk 58,000 crore annually. The NBR has been asked to provide a list of merchants enjoying the facility.

Other issues related to encouraging VAT payment, reduction, taxpayer expansion and transparency have been discussed at a pre-budget discussion.

The March of Women

More than 40pc of India's women confined to domestic work: report



Women in India depict only 27 percent of the formal labor force, despite recent inspiring statistics of improving literacy rates. Health and nutrition is also being formalized, much so in Bangladesh, which is a diffusion of going one-up on the diminutive status of women in third world countries. This is undoubtedly inspired by the global awareness of the recognition of women and their roles in the community. In India however, domestic household work, a product of historic marginalized attitudes, is still not considered in formal policy. Working 10 times more than men at unpaid work, considering household compensated productivity would contribute US $300 bn to India annually. However, much like Bangladesh, many challenges remain, to liberate women and shine a light of success towards their gender.

Women's economic footprints are growing
Delightful news, in contrast, where women-led households have been noticed to multiply six-folds, in the last decade in Bangladesh. From around 62 thousand, it stood at 3.63 lakh in 2013.

Car importers worry

STRANDED CARS AT MONGLA PORT Barvida demands Tk2 lakh duty slab to release each of vehicles

The spotlight today turns to Mongla port where businesses are impeded due to bureaucratic government processes. Some 2,079 reconditioned cars remain stranded due to complexities in customs valuation and unauthorized import of more than five year old cars. Of them, imported between 2009 and 2013, a 1000 cars have been asked to be fixed a duty of Tk 2 lakh each, for their expedited release into the market. In addition to this, release also depends on meeting vehicle demand. The alternative was a counter-proposal to depreciate the cars at 95%, suggested by the Bangladesh Reconditioned Vehicle Importers & Dealers Association.

Global Entrepreneurship ranking

To start a new week, we look at how Bangladesh has been doing in the context of international entrepreneurship standards.

Bangladesh ranks 125th out of 132 countries in GEI 2016
Granted Bangladesh is slowly emerging as a middle income economy, where export diversification is less than dynamic, the Middle and Affluent Class is rising and RMG and leather are the main noteworthy export items driving our economy. Entrepreneurship is booming on the e-commerce front, which is a young sector by all means. Social business is attempting a breakthrough with important groundwork being held in its early stages/ Other than this, business processes are slowly being transformed with the help of online payment and mobile banking options, while registration and utility connections are still lagging far behind. Rental difficulties are related to finance, while financial flexibility is one of the struggling issues businesses face in any economy, including Bangladesh. Taking all this into consideration, let us focus on an international entrepreneurship index and witness how Bangladesh performed recently.

Bangldesh Doing Business 2016

DCCI for quick business regulatory reforms
Today we look at Bangladesh's performance in the international business ranking.

Graduating to a lower-middle income economy, Bangladesh has made progress. This was witnessed in last session's "Doing Business 2015" report by the World Bank, where Bangladesh improved its rankings. This fiscal years publication, reported however, that Bangladesh is facing a bumpy road to its progress, as it slid down two places in "Doing Business 2016" ranking of 189 countries. We ranked 174th.

Mascot for Business

Bantora Kun launched in capital to bolster Japan-Bangla trade, cultural ties

A different kind of positive step has been taken by Japan to brighten the image of Bangladesh in Japanese people’s perceptions. A bright yellow Royal Bengal Tiger mascot has been launched by the Japanese business community, to promote Bangladesh and trade relationship with Japan. Naming the mascot with their own style of language, but with some Bangladeshi touch, it is called “Bantora”: ‘Ban’ referring to us and ‘tora’ meaning tiger.

Is it ok to start my business in Bangladesh, or should I look elsewhere?

Ease of Doing Business in Bangladesh

One of the most important features of a country is the fluidity of doing business, as it is business which promotes economic performance. Bangladesh as we perceive, has many extra-legal barriers to business operations, which is typically solved outside of the law. The World Bank Group maintains a Doing Business study for economies, which is an essential indicator of business performance.  For an economically aware individual, with intentions in business development, this is a great highlight of the current standings of Bangladesh in an international context.

In 2015, Bangladesh stands at 173, a 3 point drop from last year, while the Distance to Frontier (DTF), which is a comparison measure across economies at a best previous time, is at 46.8%. With 10 points of measure of doing business, “Starting a business” in