The government is gearing up for the implementation of several projects meant to further improve the ease of doing business in the country.

Virgilio Fulgencio, Executive Director of the Department of Trade and Industry-Center for Industrial Competitiveness (DTI-CIC), said it would launch next month the Philippine Business Registry (PBR) that will interconnect all relevant national agencies.

He said PBR is a one-stop shop business processing, noting “that will settle the national government agencies’ problem on red tape.”

Fulgencio said another project, the Business Permits and Licensing System (BPLS), would streamline the processes in getting business permits and licenses from city and municipal governments.

BPLS is an ongoing project of the DTI, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the League of Cities of the Philippines.

The project hopes to reduce to only five steps in a single unified form the processing of new business permits and business renewals, added Fulgencio, also the director for operations of the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) representing the public sector.

“The cost now in Makati is different from that in Manila. So, (BPLS hopes to address this as) it uses a single unified form,” he noted. “I think right now, there are at least 120 LGUs (local government units) that have expressed intention to participate in that single form, five steps, five-day BPLS.”

For the export sector, Fulgencio said, the National Single Window project shortens the processing time for permits, licenses and clearances. Led by the Bureau of Customs (BoC), this project links at least ten government agencies involved in foreign trade.

He believes that the full implementation of these three projects can contribute significantly to the improvement of the country’s competitiveness ranking.

original source: Philippine Information Agency (PIA)