Bangladesh has moved up by two notches in the Business Environment Rankings (BER) 2014, prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) of the London-based financial weekly The Economist.
The latest BER put Bangladesh at the 69th place in the list of 82 countries covering Asia, Europe, America, Middle East and Africa, reports BSS.
Last year Bangladesh secured 71st position with scoring 4.7 out of total 10 points, calculated on the basis of various parameters of doing business. This year the country scored 5.38 that took it ahead of Pakistan. Pakistan ranked 74th this year, two notches down from the last year's 72nd position.
Among the SAARC countries, India and Sri Lanka achieved 57th and 61st positions accordingly when the four other members of this regional group were not included in the BER.
Singapore retained the top position with a score of 8.56 when Switzerland held the second place for the consecutive second year followed by Hong Kong, Canada and Australia among the top five places. Canada, which ranked 7th last year, significantly improved its position to the 4th place this year.
The bottom five countries are Morocco, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Dominican Republic and Greece.
The BER identified infrastructure as a relative weak point for Asia, with only Singapore ranking among the world's top 10 in this category compared with other areas of the business environment
While some of the region's infrastructure is excellent, particularly in telecoms and air transport, other areas require investment to improve distribution networks and utilities provision, as well as lower office rents, the report said. The business rankings model measures the quality or attractiveness of the business environment in the 82 countries and designed to reflect the main criteria used by companies to formulate their global business strategies, and is based not only on historical conditions but also on expectations about conditions prevailing over the next five years.
The report also focuses on how economic and political developments will shape the business environment in 82 of the world's largest economies over the next five years.
