Corruption top problematic factor for businesses: CPD survey

Corruption was the top problematic factor for businesses in Bangladesh in 2023, a survey conducted by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) found.

Corruption was a major problematic factor in 2022 too, according to the CPD survey concluded in partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF) on "The state of the business environment in Bangladesh".

A staggering 67.6 percent of the respondents complained about a high level of corruption as the major problematic factor.

The 'Executive Opinion Survey' was carried out from May-July of 2023 on 71 senior officials of small, medium and large companies of different sectors.

"Limited effective measures to curb corruption as well as lack of transparency and accountability in the business process carried out by the public agencies such as licensing, logistics and service-providing activities weaken the business environment," according to the Bangladesh Business Environment 2023, which was prepared in the light of the survey.

After corruption, inefficient government bureaucracy (54.9 percent of the respondents) and foreign currency instability (46.5 percent) topped the list of the most problematic factors.

Before 2022, foreign currency instability ranked among the bottom three, but it jumped to the top five in the last two years.

Inflation (39.4 percent in 2023) has been ranked as the fifth most important factor for the last two years, whereas it was in the bottom three in the previous years.