Power generation pushes Bangladesh one notch up in World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ ranking

Increased power generation has pushed Bangladesh one notch up in the Ease of Doing Business ranking published by the World Bank.

The country, which ranked 177 in the previous year’s ranking has secured the 176th place in the latest study. It scored 41.97 on the 2019 index, compared to 41.06 a year ago. Bangladesh has the lowest ranking in South Asia on the latest index.

The World Bank Group’s 2019 Ease of Doing Business Score study, analyses how effective government regulations are at promoting a positive business environment.

The study ranks the business environment of a country based on 11 indicator sets: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and labour market regulations.

Bangladesh’s ranking was calculated using data from Chittagong and Dhaka.

Bangladesh made a major improvement in the score in getting electricity with an increase of 8.06 percentage points.

Bangladesh scored 22.75 in 2018 in getting electricity, which increased to 30.81 in 2019.

The country has set a new record of 11,534MW power generation. The power plants produced 11, 534 megawatts of electricity at 7pm on Sep 17, 2018 – a new record, according to the Power Development Board.

The number of power plants increased to 108 from 27 when the ruling Awami League government came to power in 2009.

More power plants hiked the power generation capacity to 20,000MW from 3,000MW, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said at a recent programme.