PH improves to 95th out of 190 in 2020 World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report

Thursday, at the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) Summit, “Forging Forward, Overcoming Adversity: Ease of Doing Business in the Time of Pandemic,” Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) Director-General Jeremiah Belgica reports: doing business in the Philippines continues to improve largely due to the ARTA initiatives.

The 2020 World Bank Doing Business Report showed the Philippines ranked 95th out of 190 economies with a score of 62.8, jumping 29 notches from 124th with a score of 57.68 in 2019.

The World Bank (WB) rates a country’s EODB performance based on ten indicators that represent the life cycle of a business:

1. Starting a Business,
2. Dealing with Construction Permits,
3. Getting Electricity,
4. Registering Property,
5. Getting Credit,
6. Protecting Minority Investors,
7. Paying Taxes,
8. Trading Across Borders,
9. Enforcing Contracts, and
10. Resolving Insolvency

“We significantly leap-frogged on three indicators – Protecting Minority Investors, Getting Credit, and Dealing with Construction Permits,” said Belgica.

Despite the pandemic, the agency was able to make significant progress on its goal of streamlining and re-engineering government processes and enforcing zero-contact policy through accessible online government transactions and mandatory electronic-Business One-Stop-Shop (BOSS) in local governments.

The ARTA chief also reiterated his concerns on how the World Bank conducts its survey, particularly on how it falls short in reflecting improvements in other indicators.

Belgica cited the “inconsistencies with the results of the customer satisfaction survey by agencies against the assessment of the report’s respondents, which may have emanated from the fact that those who responded to the WB Survey are not the same persons transacting with the agencies/LGUs. It may be that the respondents to the survey of WB are officials of the Law/Accounting firms while those transacting with the agencies/LGUs are the liaison officers or processors or clerks or sometimes messengers of the Law/Accounting firms,” Belgica said.

“Some respondents may not be those who are transacting in Quezon City. Thus, there may be a possibility that the responses were their experience with other local government units,” he added.

Belgica also noted the need to have a “clear distinction between the preparation time of the applicant and the processing time of the agencies.”

To address his concerns, the anti-red tape chief offered a few recommendations:

“The DB Survey Team should filter and select entities who have experienced the process or regulations as specifically indicated in the case study assumptions of the indicators… there is also a need to brief the respondents very well to ensure that they have the right appreciation of the survey and even the assumptions,” said Belgica.

SOURCE: PNA