15,000 SROs, many rules, regulations plague business climate
Khawaza Main Uddin
Bangladesh’s business environment is plagued by serious regulatory uncertainty and non-compliance with rules and regulations despite having 15,000 statutory regulatory orders issued in various times, believe experts on trade and investment.
Because, they say, new rules and regulations are often introduced without necessary consultation and impact assessment where many areas of business such as health, education, environment and agriculture remain largely unregulated.
Against such a backdrop, a global lending agency is negotiating with the government on how to introduce a more systematic process of evaluating the costs and benefits of regulations called Regulatory Impact Assessment or RIA to improve the atmosphere for doing business.
Bangladesh Investment Climate Fund, a project managed by International Finance Corporation, has put forward the proposal for introduction of the RIA process now being followed by many countries to improve the understanding of economic and social welfare impacts of regulation.
‘In Bangladesh, there are almost 1,000 acts and 10,000 rules and regulations, which generally lack clarity and consistency. Unless regulations are made proper, they pose high risks for business,’ noted Stephen Rimmer, a World Bank expert, advocating introduction of an institution under the Prime Minister’s Office.
‘Regulatory reforms are important to generate additional economic growth and employment,’ he said while speaking on ‘Reducing Regulatory Uncertainty in Bangladesh: Measuring the costs and benefits of regulations’ at a workshop on Wednesday. The expert proposed that the government of Bangladesh could start with a policy to make RIA process work.
It was also told that the regulatory assessment process might be more effective as the country was expecting to see a vibrant and functional parliament and oversight role of various standing committees.
The RIA process includes identification of problems with new or existing regulation, options to solve the problems, appraisals of costs and benefits, selection of effective options and advocacy and public participation through the process.
The idea of the new process and institution has been mooted at a time when the country has Regulatory Reforms Commission, an ad hoc body formed by the interim government to bring reforms in laws, rules and regulations that thwart growth of businesses.
An expert from Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ferdous Ara, underlined the need for creating new institutional mechanism to improve regulatory regime and mentioned that the reforms commission had no implementing authority.
Dwelling on the issue, economist Sajjad Zohir said the country must work out a strategy to reduce dependency on foreign consultants. Because, he pointed out, the national authorities need to own and take over policies or programmes when the consultants leave at one stage. ‘There is of course something wrong with the role of the consultants; we need to bring changes in this respect.’
Samir Asaf, a member of the Bangladesh Better Business Forum, expressed the views that the country’s regulatory atmosphere was not satisfactory, so the country needed a major overhaul in creating enabling atmosphere for business. ‘Public sector accountability is not there and the private sector not properly engaged in the process of making regulations,’ he said.
Board of Investment executive chairman Kamal Uddin Ahmed welcomed such an initiative and said the country would need to do ‘something’ about the prevalence of several regulations for making them coherent and conducive to business activities.
Courtesy: newagebd.com
