The primary goal of this project is to address systemic corruption in Bangladesh’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector by fostering collaboration among stakeholders by creating a new collective pressure group called the Forum for Fair Business and then engaging with the government to make changes in regulatory and institutional environments to address corruption issues. The proposed project builds on the project’s first phase, which took place between 01 February 2021 and 31 April 2023 and allowed CGS to collect evidence about the pervasiveness of corruption and the issues encountered by SMEs.

 According to the findings of the first phase, there is a lack of a platform and a Modus Operandi for SMEs to combat corruption inside the SME sector and its contacts with the public sector, particularly with the government. A multi- phase effort to counteract corruption often takes either an inward-looking or an outward-looking approach. The inward-looking approach entails, among other things, constructing procedures inside the private sector, forming transparency and integrity pacts, and recognizing change agents. The outward-looking strategy mobilizes a group of businesses from the private sector to engage with the government at both the national and sub-national levels, notably divisional and district governments. There are examples of both becoming successful. However, the project’s planned second phase proposes combining these two features in light of Bangladesh’s ground reality.