‘Mobile-enabled’ systems to ease business registration

THE Philippines has set a target of a No. 20 global ranking for ease of doing business by 2022 by launching a program facilitating business registration, the Department of Trade and Industry said on Tuesday.

“We’ll see where we land but you know our target is top 20 by 2020… something like that,” Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez told reporters in Malacañang yesterday.

Mr. Lopez said the Philippines can achieve such a goal through a “mobile-enabled” system that his department will launch soon to “automate everything,” thereby making business registration “very easy” especially for millennials.

“We intend to really put technology in it. There has to be some automation in the systems, streamlining of the process and automation, and putting it in mobile,” the Trade chief said.

“If we can achieve that — mobile-enabled — then I think we can be in the top 20. That’s the vision,” he added.

The Philippines has climbed four notches to 99 from 103 out of 190 economies in the 2017 World Bank-International Finance Corporation Doing Business Report.

Last month, Mr. Lopez was quoted as saying in news reports that his agency is aiming to make the Philippines’ ranking in ease of doing business reach the “58th to 63rd” places in the next World Bank report.

In February, New Zealand, which topped the latest Ease of Doing Business ranking, offered to send experts to share best practices, in aid of the government’s campaign to cut red tape.

Meanwhile, 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 revenuegenerating offices — the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs. —