BY Ben Arnold O. de Vera, Reporter

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said development partners have lent support to streamline the Philippines’ business registration processes.

DTI said support from German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the World Bank’s International Finance Corp. (IFC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) made possible the dissemination of successful business permits and licensing system (BPLS) models that are being adopted by various local government units (LGUs) nationwide.

“Streamlining involves the reduction of necessary steps and required forms, the introduction of one-stop shops, computerization, mobile collection teams, close monitoring, learning workshops and benchmarking with other successful LGUs,” DTI said.

DTI said the adoption of BPLS models have resulted in improved business activity in localities in the Visayas, such as Calbayog City, where the number of registered new businesses reportedly grew by about four times. The same is true for Iloilo, which had P17-million worth of annual productivity savings.
“Rather than introduce reform through trial and error without any support, LGUs in Regions VI, VII and VIII sought assistance through foreign-funded orientation and capacity-building programs to improve their systems and processes,” DTI said.

“After successfully launching BPLS across the Visayas, the efforts to replicate it elsewhere were boosted this week by two successive workshops held for LGU officials in the Central and Southern Luzon regions.
BPLS will then be further ‘upscaled’ across Mindanao through similar two-day workshops,” the DTI said.

The agency said streamlining business registration processes helps LGUs increase revenues as well as cut red tape, thus improving the local investment climate and the productivity of employees.

“Complicated and burdensome business registration systems are a common source of complaints from business owners, many of whom are opting to skip the process altogether. For the LGUs, lower registrations mean less revenue and therefore even lesser funds from dues and taxes that would have gone into the development of their areas,” DTI said.