Businessmen often come up with lots of complaints regarding problems they have to face during doing business and commerce, which need a serious consideration, for all these are very detrimental to ensuring an encouraging business atmosphere. They point fingers at a group of unscrupulous members of law enforcement agencies and tax officials and say they are harassed in almost all stages of business, including import, transport, taxation of goods etc. It is really shocking when business doers have to face so many problems that deter the flourish of business in the country.
The relationship between businessmen and the National Board of Revenue (NBR) have to be based on cooperation. Law enforcement agencies will take legal actions against those who break laws. But it is not desired that attempts would be made to stop goods-laden trucks all of a sudden on middle of street in the name of law execution. This is a frequent experience on highways. Many times, businessmen are also allegedly forced to ‘compromise’ with the law enforcing members concerned to reach the products to destinations in good time, for which consumers have to pay the price at the end.
Similarly, it also applies to the revenue division. Businessmen will pay taxes according to the law. But it is unexpected that a section of the government department would compromise with some ‘special’ people in exchange for money or because of high political influence of the businessmen concerned and at the same time would harass others having neither of these two means of compromise.
On the other hand, we think the traders, too, cannot evade their liability in this respect. Some traders intentionally violate the law or evade taxes so that they can come to a compromise with the government department concerned. They are not even allowed to bring allegations against any specific person. It raises a pertinent question – how could solutions be reached if questions and allegations of traders are not open? In that case, written complaints can be made at least, but there must be a complaining system through specifying the names of tax officers or lawmen concerned.
The government has set a target to bring the country’s global position in the doing business index below 100 by 2021. Analysts say the government has taken up some initiatives to improve the country’s position, but those are so weak and slow that it is hard to achieve the target. Political commitment and administrative action should work simultaneously for mending weaknesses in the business climate. Bangladesh is still lagging behind in areas like property rights, electricity, transportation, credit and land, and security for businesses. Doubts persists whether the efforts would yield results to ensure the country’s rank below 100th in the doing business index by 2021.
A hassle-free business environment has to be developed so that people feel confident and interested in investing more. And improvement in the key areas is a must, not only to give a positive signal to overseas investors, but also to render businesses far easier to spur national economic developments.
