Business Confidence Survey

A Perception Snapshot

The Bangladesh Business Confidence Survey (BCS) is an initiative led by the Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD).

The survey gathers enterprises’ perception about general business conditions in the past six months and their expectations in the upcoming six months. Perceptions are captured through qualitative questions relating to the following indices — economic situation, access to finance, business regulation, tax and customs, international business, input and infrastructure, and business environment. Such surveys are used globally by governments and policymakers to understand how businesses feel about the overall operating environment — to identify what has been helping business and determine what needs to be improved.

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Fifth Business Confidence Survey

The Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD) and the USAID-funded Feed the Future Bangladesh Trade Activity jointly presented the 5th Business Confidence Survey Report 2022 on 5 March 2023 at InterContinental Hotel, Dhaka. The survey was conducted between September and November 2022, covering 567 business entities across Bangladesh and aimed to analyze the existing business condition in the last six months (March 2022–August 2022) and anticipate turning points in the economic activities for the next six months (December 2022–June 2023) to enable businesses to prepare and plan accordingly to mitigate risks.

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Fourth Business Confidence Survey

The fourth BCS was conducted between March and August 2019, covering 250 businesses across the country. The 4th business confidence survey is carried out to understand the perception of business enterprises in Bangladesh about the existing state of the business environment from July to December 2019 and what will excite business in the next period of January to June 2020. The 4th BCS has taken the period of July to December 2018 as a baseline. The data was supposed to be collected from January to June 2019, but because of some preparative arrangement, the survey could not start right in January 2019.

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Third Business Confidence Survey

The third Bangladesh Business Confidence Survey (BCS) was conducted between 6 February and 6 March 2015, covering 400 businesses in Dhaka and Chittagong. BUILD has started the BCS in 2013 and has been conducting subsequent surveys every six months. In this 3rd BCS, BUILD has compared Business Confidence Index for January–June 2014 with July–December 2014 and tried to assess the expected confidence for January-June 2015. The survey has been conducted on 400 manufacturing and service enterprises in the following ten sectors: food, textiles, garments, leather, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, electronics and light engineering, wholesale and retail, hotel and restaurants, transport and communications, cyber and telecommunications, real estate.

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Second Business Confidence Survey

The second Bangladesh Business Confidence Survey was conducted between 15 June and 10 July 2014, covering 400 businesses in Dhaka and Chittagong. It is based on business perceptions regarding the period of January to June 2014. For the purposes of analysis, we compare it to the results of the baseline first BCS, which covered the period July to December 2013.

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First Business Confidence Survey

This pilot baseline Business Confidence Survey was undertaken by Business Initiative Leading Development (BUILD) together with Associates for Development Services Limited (ADSL). The survey was conducted with businesses in Dhaka City and covered three consecutive time period: January-June 2013, July-December 2013 and January-June 2014.

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