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[The fifth of a Post-Covid-19 Recovery series]
Crises do not have to be a dead-end, certainly not if the right lessons are learned. What this means for upwardly-mobile countries, such as Bangladesh, is to pit the pandemic with the business climate, then draw conclusions.
One insurance company, FM Global, helps us in this exercise. Annually it publishes the Global Resilience Index (GRI), based on such indicators as political stability, corporate governance, risk environment, supply chain logistics, and transparency. Since Bangladesh only recently prioritised making its business climate more globally friendly, it is too much of a newcomer to have robust records on these indicators. This fragility, one might deduce, makes it vulnerably exposed to pandemic-like crises. Such a conclusion might not necessarily be true, but is 106th placed ranking, out of 130-odd countries in the 2019 GRI picture, raises more than eyes and leaves more than food for thinking?
There is a similar pandemic ranking, Worldometers, done on an hourly basis, that gives perhaps the most microscopic and macroscopic picture of the world amid the Covid-19 outbreak today. On Monday morning of the last day of the Bangla calendar (April 13), it had recorded over 18,50,000 cases, 4.0 per cent of whom "did not make it" (over 1,14,000). Glancing through this list, we note how 13 countries have a fatality figure of more than four, that is more than a thousand deaths, and how some lessons can already be drawn from them.
It is a sordid picture, but the country where the pandemic began, China, now has been surpassed by seven countries with a higher fatality record. The United States leads that list with just over 22,000, followed by the brief leader, Italy, with 20,000-odd. Spain has 17,000, followed by France (14,500+), and the United Kingdom (10,600+) in the five-figure ranks. Iran and Belgium remain the other two above China's 3,400+, with 4,500+ and 3,600+, respectively.
Below China are Germany, with 3,000+, the Netherlands with 2,800+, Brazil's 1,300+, Turkey's 1,200, and Switzerland's 1,100+. Bangladesh's 34 score belies the rapid recent climb-rate, a plague afflicting many of the world's most open economies (epidemiologically dubbed not turning the 'flattening' curve fully as yet), but also indicative of the concentric-circled spread of the pandemic: from China to Far-east Asia, Europe, thence the United States, and thereafter countries in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere across Asia, so far, in that order. That order has been primarily, though not exclusively, triggered by migratory or travel flows, with the heavy Chinese New Year tourist flows, first the expatriates and specialists helping other countries returning home for the early February festivals (which never happened as usual), then, after China's lockdown was withdrawn, gradually as it was, throughout March, before their return to where they were. Or the Belt Road Initiative project they were helping to build in more than half of the world's countries. Or the many foreigners in China wanting to go home because of the difficulties imposed by the pandemic, particularly the Boxer Rebellion-type late-19th century xenophobic outbursts being revived post-pandemic. Or upon China insisting how Italian visitors brought the virus with them as early as late-2019. The first registration of the disease was in November, in China).
Whatever the interpretation or implication, GRI 2019 has not absorbed, nor does it portray these. On the contrary, its 2019 Top Ten depicts an entirely different picture. It must be acknowledged that Covid-19 developments have, almost in its entirety, a 2020 phenomenon, so would have no 2019 bearing, except marginally with China. Nonetheless, we get a picture that might say more of the pandemic than we get from Worldometers.
Norway leads the 2019 GRI Top Ten, interestingly followed by eight other West European countries. The only exception, at #9, is the United States, but not the United States we know as a country: it is the United States Central, indicating how the world's top/second-largest economy is so diverse in its business climate that it must be divided into three, with a manufacturing east coast, and a service-sector-dominant west coast, and the agriculture-driven central. Yet, this farming-flavoured segment depicts more of the business-conducive features than the other two.
Following Norway are Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Luxembourg, Austria, and the United Kingdom, in that order. What stands out is how the 10th-placed United Kingdom leads the pandemic fatality list (over 10,000), followed by 4th ranked Germany (3,000+ fatality), 3rd ranked Switzerland (1,100+), 6th ranked Sweden (900+), 8th ranked Austria (350+), 2nd ranked Denmark (300+), and top-ranked Norway (only 120+). Luxembourg and Finland did not have a pandemic casualty figure high enough to be on the list (66 and 56, respectively).
Once again, GRI 2020 might show a hugely different Top-Ten than this, but at least we can start thinking of what can be done to make countries more business-friendly in the future even amid any pandemic. For a start, we have seen how health has crept into the business calculations for the first time. Hospitals are the answers, meaning countries, like those upwardly-mobile ones alluded to, including Bangladesh, must get its medical infrastructures in shape. For a less-developed country, Bangladesh is not doing too bad on this front, but now how it must fit health regulations at every entry and exit port, and require a health passport of every passenger. One suspects this will become a universalised post-Covid-19 global feature, but nonetheless, there is more to be gained from being a pioneer than a follower, as every business person will attest.
Extending health requirements from hospitals to factories is the most and far more onerous task. On the positive side this will distribute medical infrastructures more widely and locally, which always appeals to foreign investors, not to mention domestic consumers. On top of that are the business windows opened in the domestic economy: new medical demands can only boost pharmaceutical industries, another signal attracting foreign investors and boosting domestic consumer confidence. Employment will grow, and implicitly health insurance, another huge and largely untapped industry across Bangladesh, will be catalysed into action.
On the negative side will be the obvious added costs. Bangladesh is still too much of a low-wage industrialising country, and too addicted to negligent-to-nil standards in worker recruitment. Adding these new health regulations, for instance, is an instant burden our more-than-typically short-term-minded businessmen will clearly avoid. If introduced as a required long-term plan by the relevant ministry, it has a chance of entering the business nexus in the visible future. Yet, that is the very hump this pandemic alerts us to quickly eliminate, the lesson learned that might end up pushing the country a few notches up in future GRI calculations. If mandated by government-enforced legislations now, like the RMG (ready-made-garment) Accord and Alliance regulations were, the country again emits positive business vibes.
One must draw the obvious conclusion of the Covid-19 pandemic: it will fundamentally alter society, and with it politics and business, from as early as 2021, Bangladesh's 50th birthday anniversary year. Getting businesses rolling by the end of 2020 will not be enough, by a long margin: no Covid-19 medicine will be possible before mid-2021, meaning the damage of 1,14,000 deaths and 18,50,000 cases is only a starter; and by December the havoc will spread to outer-rim countries like Bangladesh, that without fundamental policy changes in all life aspects must begin now. Otherwise it will be like kissing our developed-country future a remorseful bye-bye.
Dr. Imtiaz A. Hussain is Dean (Acting), School of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (SLASS) and Head, Global Studies & Governance Program Independent University, Bangladesh