NZ offers help to improve ease of doing business

NEW ZEALAND has offered to send experts to share best practices on improving the ease of doing business, in aid of the administration’s campaign to cut red tape, according to a statement sent to reporters recently.

In a meeting with Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III last week, New Zealand Ambassador to Manila David J. Strachan said that the government can learn from New Zealand’s fasttracked business registration processes.

According to Mr. Strachan, the anti- red tape efforts have “resulted in immeasurable economic and social benefits” to New Zealand.

“[ T] hese experts will meet many government partners and other stakeholders and they will produce a series of recommendations that could contribute to the whole decision making process,” Mr. Strachan told Mr. Dominguez.

Mr. Dominguez on the other hand welcomed the offer, as he said that he will endorse the New Zealand delegation to various agencies.

Moreover, Mr. Strachan noted that the Philippines can benefit from an automated one-stop shop for business registration.

New Zealand topped the World Bank’s latest Ease of Doing Business ranking, beating out Singapore 2015, after placing third in 2014.

Mr. Dominguez said that talks will resume on the proposed adoption of New Zealand’s automated aviation billing system, which promises to improve the revenue of airline operators.

The automated aviation billing system, or the Flight-Yield system, retrieves details of all flights automatically from an air traffic management system and applies the appropriate charging policy for each air traff ic control service provided to each flight, allowing accurate computation of fees charged to each airline.

The proposal was presented in 2014 to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), but has failed to reach execution.

According to Mr. Strachan, it was reintroduced to the CAAP in October, and has received sufficient feedback for an evaluation of the proposal.

The Department of Finance, in partnership with the Department of Information and Communications Technology, is currently working on a business and citizens registry system, to speed up registration processes at the government’s two revenue generating offices — the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs. —