Despite certain upgrading in position this year, Bangladesh is one of the 10 bottom countries in terms of entrepreneurship development. The Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) for 2016 has placed the country at 125th out of 132 countries, five places up from last year’s ranking at 130th among 130 countries. Bangladesh is also at the bottom of ranking among the countries of the Asia-Pacific, a region which is diverse in entrepreneurship development and offers the greatest potential for economic growth, according to the GEI report. The region contains global laggards such as Sri Lanka at 97th, India at 98th, Myanmar at 117th, Indonesia at 103th and Pakistan at 109th. The country stands alongside Uganda (123), Benin (124), Burkina Faso (126), Madagascar (127), Sierra Leone (128), Mauritania (129), Malawi (130), Burundi (131) and Chad (132), according to the ranking prepared by the Washington-based Global
Entrepreneurship and Development Institute. Bangladesh’s score is 15.8 compared to the best score of 86.2 by the top-ranking country, the United States, which is followed by Canada, Australia, Denmark and Sweden. Bangladesh’s confidence intervals is 13.4-17 compared to the US’ 81.1-91.4, China’s (60) 33-36.9, India’s 22.9-27, Vietnam’s 26.1-30.2 and Myanmar’s 11-24.7. When Bangladesh’s overall GEI score is 15.2 in a scale of 100, the country scores 14.6 in entrepreneurial attitude, 21 in entrepreneurial abilities and only 10 in entrepreneurial aspirations. The GEI report said China’s GEI score is almost 50 per cent higher than India’s, possibly suggesting that the bureaucratic red tape common in India constrains entrepreneurial activity in the country. “This problem is common to all of the bottom-six countries in the Asia-Pacific group (i.e., India, Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Bangladesh),” the report pointed out. In the World Bank’s latest global ranking on doing business, “Doing Business 2016: Measuring Regulatory Quality and Efficiency”, Bangladesh ranks 174 among 189 economies. The country’s position in the “Global Competitiveness Report of 2015-16”, prepared by World Economic Forum, is 107th among 140 countries. The country is also the 131st freest economy among 186 countries in the 2015 Index of Economic Freedom, an annual guide published yesterday by Washington-based Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.
