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By Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter
Senate President Manuel Villar cited Sunday
government agencies that have been adopting “out-of-the-box”
thinking to reduce red tape, which is choking the country’s
business competitiveness.
Villar singled out the Philippine Rice Research
Institute in the Science City of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, for initiating
the Farmers’ Text Center.
“Under this system, rice farmers with crop
problems are given access to scientists and experts’ advice,
comments and recommendations through SMS,” he said.
Villar also commended the Leyte office of the
Department of Trade and Industry for reducing the usual 17-step
processing of business permits and licensing in Ormoc City to just
five steps.
He urged other government agencies to think
“out of the box” to implement relevant laws on competitiveness
and bureaucratic reforms and to instill a business-friendly
environment following the country’s poor showing in the World Bank
Global Competitiveness—Doing Business Survey 2008.
The survey ranked the Philippines 133rd of 178
economies. It also noted that registering a business in the
Philippines requires 15 procedures that take up 15 to 58 days to
process.
He said bureaucratic reforms to allow shorter
transaction processing should now be implemented in agencies like
the Department of Trade and Industry, the Securities and Exchange
Commission, the Bureaus of Customs and of Internal Revenue.
Villar has authored Resolution 166 urging
various executive departments to adopt mechanisms to implement
relevant laws on competitiveness and bureaucratic reforms.
The measure is pending in a committee. The
Senate, meanwhile, has approved on third and final reading the
measure seeking to promote entrepreneurship by strengthening the
development and assistance programs to micro-, small- and
medium-scale enterprises.
Those enterprises comprise 99.6 percent of all
registered firms in the country, employ 69.9 percent of the entire
work force, and contribute 32 percent to the economy.
The approved bill, a consolidation of measures
filed by Sens. Loren Legarda, Mar Roxas, Bong Revilla, Jinggoy
Estrada and Villar, gives emphasis to the development of
agriculture-rural-based enterprises. It seeks to facilitate their
access to sources of funds and assures them a fair share of
government contracts and related incentives and preferences.
Another key provision of the measure complements
and supplements financing programs for such enterprises by doing
away with stringent and burdensome collateral requirements that
small entrepreneurs usually find extremely difficult to comply with.
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