The Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) has reviewed the pledges different government agencies made to them in January for easing the doing business process in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is currently ranked 176th among 190 countries in the World Bank’s ease of doing the ranking.

The new state entity, which was formed by merging the Board of Investment and Privatization Commission in October last year, set an ambitious target of securing a place below 100 by 2021, which means at least 15 notches improvement would be required a year.

BIDA discussed it with the different ministries and come up with an announcement on Jan 1 that all process of starting a business would be completed by seven days in place of 19.5 days now.

In line with the reform, the agency like RAJUK would give construction permits within 60 days instead of current 278 days and processes of getting electricity connection would be completed by 28 working days in place of 404 days.

Certified copy of registered deed will be made available right at the time of registration while a copy of the deed will be sent to the AC land for mutation immediately after registration.

Representatives of those departments during the Wednesday’s review meeting at a hotel said that they were implementing the pledges they made in Jan.

A Rajuk official said they established a help desk so that investors get information. They also set up a suggestion box to get comments from the investors.

A task force has been created to monitor the progress. 15 days is now required for land use clearance certificate which is supposed to take 3O days. Special project permission days have been reduced to 15 days from 45 days.

A power division official said due to their reforms; businesses are getting electricity even within 15 days if they have all the completed papers.

A National Board of Revenue official said they had taken the step to enact a new customs act which can be passed by the parliament anytime. They are also doing automated system of customs data and creating a ‘national single window’ for reducing the cost of doing business.

Abul Kalam Azad, Chief Coordinator for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Affairs in the Prime Minister's Office, thanked those who were implementing their plans for easing the process of doing businesses.

But he said he would write to the government departments who remained absent during the review asking them the reason.

“We have to ensure accountability and our effort should be to do better and better,” he said. “We must try, fix challenging target so that we can go below 99 or close to the 99 in the ranking.”

He also suggested them to see whether the number of papers required for a complete application of starting businesses or getting any approval can be reduced. “We have to progress gradually to reach the vision 2O21 of the Prime Minister”.

He also suggested a monthly review of the steps various government departments are taking to lure investors.

BIDA executive chairman Kazi M Aminul Islam said every agency took on the responsibility during the January exercise before their announcement.

“This year we got only five months. We are expecting the results of our activities in the 2O18 index,” he said as the next ease of doing business report would be released in October this year with the data collected till May.

He said foreigner investors would need not to come to BIDA for getting visa recommendations. They will get that online as part of easing the visa process.

Law Ministry’s Senior Secretary of the legislative and parliament affairs division Mohammad Shahidul Haque and Bangladesh Bank governorFazle Kabir also spoke at the meeting.

The next review will take place after three months.