04 October 2016- The National Competitiveness Councilhas been granted technical assistance by the British Embassy through the Asia Pacific Bilateral Programme Fund to support Project Repeal. The assistance is the subject of the signing of an agreement between British Ambassador to the Philippines His Excellency Asif Ahmad, DTI Secretary Ramon Lopez, and NCC Private Sector Co-Chairman Guillermo M. Luz.

The assistance will be used for the development, pilot–testing and initial roll-out of the Standard Cost Model for Project Repeal in a bid to come up with a systematic way of determining the savings brought about by reduced cost of compliance for businesses as a result of the streamlining of rules and regulations.

It will also be utilized to conduct a series of activities, including supplementary focus group discussions (FGDs) that will be held in several regions in the country to have a wider stakeholder engagement and ensure the project’s greater impact.

Technical workshops on Regulatory Cost Analysis and Cost Data Capture and Standardization will be organized in order to create a cost model that will provide a statistically robust, valid, and reliable method in estimating the regulatory burdens imposed by existing regulations on businesses.

Red tape is among the top concerns that dampen business confidence and holds back the Philippine’s overall competitiveness. The country is firmly committed to reduce red tape through the simplification and streamlining of rules and regulations from national government agencies to local government units.

The NCC’s Project Repeal, an initiative that has drawn inspiration from UK’s Red Tape Challenge, was initiated as a government-wide deregulation system that addresses the growing need for a wider effort to cut red tape across agencies and to facilitate an efficient government regulatory environment in the country by removing outdated, redundant, and burdensome rules and regulations that have negatively affected the ease of doing business in the country.