Ease of Doing Business in Bhutan

How easy is it to establish a business in Bhutan? This is the first question any aspiring entrepreneur should ask before anything else. Likewise, multinational companies who wishes to set up Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) businesses in Bhutan would definitely ask the same. The present government's effort and their drive is towards making it easy to do business in Bhutan - as far as my understanding goes. Some Nu. 5 billion has supposedly been injected as a Economic Stimulus Plan (ESP), which I believe is mainly to curb out the INR shortages. A special taskforce has been constituted to oversee this undertaking. The controversial Bhutan Opportunity and Information Center (BOIC) has also been established to fast-track the processes. However, the result sums up otherwise.

According to the 2014 World Bank report, the ease of doing business ranking for Bhutan was 122 out of 189 countries. In 2015, it has fallen down to 125, much against the hope and efforts put in by the government. Bhutan falls miserably in the lower segment of countries where doing business is considered to be difficult. While the rank on starting a business has improved considerably, the same has fallen down significantly on enforcing contracts.

Source: Doing Business, World Bank Group

Hopefully, there would be a time when businesses would boom and compete against the imported products. If we are to be self reliant, then the government must make it conducive to whoever chooses to make a difference. "It is not the question about whether we can or cannot, it is more about whether we do or do not", as His Majesty puts it in his visionary speech to the nation.