App for business registration expected to be ready next year
A MOBILE application that can hasten business registration should be ready by next year in time for the World Bank’s assessment of the country’s standing in global competitiveness, an official of the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) said on Wednesday.
NCC, the public-private panel tasked to raise the country’s competitiveness and attract investments, is tapping technology entrepreneurs from the private sector to build the app, which can integrate the separate systems of government agencies.
Guillermo M. Luz, NCC’s private sector co-chairman, said the move would also allow the council to avoid the lengthy procedure involved in traditional government procurement.
“We’re gearing up now to put in all these changes in time for the assessment of February to May 2018, (which) is for release in the October 2018 report,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the 5th Ease of Doing Business Summit at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City.
NCC’s stance comes as it sets a target for the Philippines to jump to the 20th place in the 2020 global competitiveness ranking by using a mobile application to cut the time businesses spend in transacting with the government.
Mr. Luz said NCC will outsource the app’s development. He also said counterparts in New Zealand have been tapped for their expertise.
“When we take a look at something like cloud services and storage, that’s been resolved because you can get huge capacity now. What we need to get is more connectivity. But we don’t need to wait for 100% super-fantastic connectivity,” he said.
“One thing good about the smartphone (is) if you have the app, you can fill out the form and all the data even if you’re not in a wi-fi hotspot. Then when you enter the hotspot, that’s when you send,” he added.
He said by end-May, the country should have in place “visible and measured” improvement for Quezon City — one of the LGUs used by International Finance Corp. (IFC) in assessing the country’s competitiveness performance — and government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The app developers, they can be quite fast,” he said. “I believe they can do things in a matter of a very few months to develop and test something.”
Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez, who co-chairs the NCC, described the move to go mobile as “leap-frogging” instead of an “incremental improvement” that should elevate the country from its current 99th place in the “Doing Business Report” of the IFC.
“All of these should happen by 2018, 2019,” he said, in time for the World Bank arm’s release of its 2020 report, usually in October of the preceding year.
Mr. Lopez said going mobile should hasten the country’s rise as other countries in the region, with which the country has been comparing itself in ranking, should also be putting in place their own initiatives to advance. Foreign investors use the report as a basis for their decisions.
He said the technology is available as well as the technical people who can do the application. He said outsourcing app development should free the government from investing in infrastructure.
“It’s just a matter of linking these agencies, and integrating all systems,” he said, adding that separate government agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Bureau of Internal Revenue and even local government units (LGUs) have their own initiatives to automate processes.
Ahead of the app development, NCC held an “exploratory support exercise” with New Zealand, currently the most competitive country in the report, having unseated Singapore.
Emmet McElhatton, Southeast Asia commercial manager for New Zealand’s G2G Know-How, said the instruction from Mr. Lopez was to “go straight to mobile solutions.” He said his group’s interview with Philippine businesses, the preference is to complete business registration by phone.
“[Mr. Lopez] wants to use mobile phones. We want to make sure that we offer solutions that will help them create businesses that will create jobs,” he said.
“Right now there is a significant opportunity to leap-frog ahead and not just catch up. We have to do a number of things in the short-term that is designed to impact the ranking in the World Bank report,” he said.
Among these initiatives is the creation of a mobile solution that gives the SEC and LGUs one integrated app. A “wikipedia” for all LGU processes will also be put up to give local governments the ability to compare processes.
Sought for comment, Roberto Martin Nolan Galang, the World Bank’s private sector specialist for trade and competitiveness, said: “This is really the future, that we’re moving all these processes either online or mobile. We’re very supportive for these kinds of reforms and really hope that the Philippines is really able to implement them.”
The “Doing Business Report” measures the ease of doing business across ten processes which a business must undertake with several government agencies over its typical life cycle: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. During yesterday’s summit, four local government units and one national government agency presented their respective programs that focus on innovating how they do business as well as how they are developing technologies to speed up government procedures. —