Bangladesh crawls up global competitiveness index
Bangladesh’s competitiveness in the global arena has improved even though the economy has been reeling under a protracted political turmoil.
It has climbed up eight notches to 110th place among 148 nations in the World Economic Forum’s 2013-14 Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), but corruption has also increased.
The report, published on Wednesday, said Bangladesh was 118th last year among 144 countries.
The GCI is the most respected assessment of national economic competitiveness, providing a mirror image of a country’s economic environment.
The Index is based on measures of 12 basic pillars: institutions, infrastructure, the macroeconomic environment, health, education, market efficiency, the labour market, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, innovation and business sophistication.
The pillars are further divided into 112 sub-indicators.
Non-government research organisation Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) published the report in Bangladesh on Monday.
Corruption had increased in Bangladesh over the past year shooting it to the number one slot among the 16 biggest problems faced by the businessmen in the country, the report said.
Last year, businessmen viewed corruption as the second most serious problems they faced.
Apart from it, the country also slipped in several indices compared to the last year.
However, Bangladesh has made progress in infrastructure, economic stability and market size indices.
Seventy-one businessmen from 148 countries each took part in the survey conducted with a same questioner.
The research took into consideration the period from January to December 2012.
Among other South Asian nations, India and Pakistan had slipped by one and nine steps respectively while Sri Lanka and Nepal advanced by three and five steps respectively.
Nepal is below India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Bangladesh. India tops the chart among South Asian nations with the 60th position in the GCI Index.
As was the case last year, Switzerland topped the list, followed by Singapore and Finland, followed by Germany, US and Sweden. The United States moved up from No 7 to 5, while the UK dropped from No 8 to No 10.
Additional Researcher of CPD Khandker Golam Moazzem cited various facets of the report at a media briefing in Dhaka.
He said the progress made by Bangladesh was positive and viewed it as a success.
“We have to remember that we only made up for the lost ground last year,” he said.
Bangladesh crawls up global competitiveness index - bdnews24.com