Bangladesh ranks poorly in global business skills

Bangladesh seriously lacks business skills, with the country ranking 2nd worst in the business skill domain of Coursera's Global Skills Index (GSI) measuring the performance of 60 countries.

Egypt is the only country that lags behind Bangladesh in this domain, while both India and Pakistan are ahead of us. India's position is 50 while Pakistan has the 57th position in business skills.

Egypt's political turbulence, fueled by the 2011 uprising, has taken a heavy toll on the country's economy over the years.

The first edition of the GSI released in March this year sheds light on the global skills landscape, ranking 60 countries and 10 industries across business, technology and data science. These 60 countries together account for 80 percent of the world's population and 95 percent of global GDP.

Coursera is the world's largest online platform for higher education that brings together 40 million learners around the world with over 3,000 courses from leading universities and companies.      

European countries dominate the index in all three domains, with Finland being the number 1 country in business skills, followed by Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands.

Gloomy picture of tech, data skills

Like business, Bangladesh's performance in technology and data science is dismal as well. Even though it gained the 56th spot in technology, outranking Pakistan by 3 positions, it is far behind India, which ranks 44th.

The difference between Bangladesh and India is not that big in data science, with the countries securing 57th and 51st position respectively. In this domain, Bangladesh outperformed Pakistan, which ended up in 59th position.      

Argentina and Israel topped the technology and data science domains respectively.

One of the key findings from the index is that developing countries having less invest in education see the largest skill deficiencies, with 90 percent ranking from 31st to 60th described as emerging (rank 31-45) and lagging (rank 46-60) categories. A country's rank across the three domains is negatively correlated with per-capita GDP.  

Bangladesh's ratio of education budget to the GDP has been remarkably low for more than a decade, which is a key reason why the country has not seen much progress in improving the quality of education. Experts and educationists have frequently stressed the need for investing on skills development and raising education standards to ensure higher GDP growth.     

Bangladesh also ranked 105th in the World Bank's Human Capital Index 2018 which measures the productivity of future workers.

Human capital is an intangible asset which can be classified as the economic value of a worker's experience and skills. This includes assets like education, training, intelligence, skills, health, and other things that employers value, such as loyalty and punctuality.

However, not every developed economy was able to secure the top position on the GSI.  Even America, known as the global innovation leader, has its position in or around the middle in all three domains.