August 30, 2020 | 6:33 pm
The government’s central portal streamlining the process of establishing a business is due for public launch next month, the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) said.
The central business portal aims to reduce business registration to an eight-step process lasting less than a week. Registration took 13 steps and 33 days in 2019, ARTA said in a statement Saturday.
ARTA last week met with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Social Security System (SSS), Philippine Health Insurance System (Philhealth), and the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG) to finalize the date the portal will go live for public use.
“ARTA and the agencies will be continuously coordinating the developments of the portal to make it ready for launch in September,” the authority said.
Authorized by the Ease of Doing Business Law, ARTA is in charge of implementing the system developed by the DICT. The online platform captures data on business transactions and provides links to online registration services of national government agencies and local government units.
Under this law, government agencies are tasked to “eliminate red tape, avert graft and corrupt practices and promote transparency and sustain ease of doing business.”
The DICT made changes to adapt to the pandemic, ARTA said. The closed beta testing of the platform by selected business registrants was done last week.
“Apart from adhering to the whole-of-government approach in streamlining, this CBP, in collaboration with DICT and the national government agencies, is a huge step in our push towards incorporating e-governance in our ease of doing business initiatives,” ARTA Director General Jeremiah B. Belgica said.
The portal will have a virtual national business one-stop-shop (NBOSS) for the registration of one-person corporations.
The NBOSS project consolidates the business-registration requirements of the SEC, BIR, SSS, Philhealth, and Pag-IBIG.
The first phase of the central business portal was initially launched in October last year. — Jenina P. Ibañez
Source: https://www.bworldonline.com/business-registration-portal-to-launch-in-sept/