MAYOR ABALOS CITED BY IFC FOR CHAMPIONING SBRP

International Finance Corporation (IFC) recognizes Mandaluyong City’s continuing efforts in promoting business registration reforms thru the Regulatory Simplification Project and was also cited as role model for other Philippines cities.  Mandaluyong City Mayor Benhur Abalos accepts the manual of operations on Standard Business Registration and Permitting (SBRP) process  from Jesse Ang of the IFC in a formal turnover ceremony held during the regular Monday Morning Program recently.  The project, in partnership with the IFC and the Ateneo School of Government, was championed by Mayor Abalos during his term as president of the League of Cities of the Philippines.  Mandaluyong reduced the steps for business registration from seven to only two steps that will take one day from the previous nine days.  Also in photo are Moralde Arrogante of the Mandaluyong Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the department heads of the city government.

Abalos says P-Noy-backed simplified business processing nationwide will be good for economy.

Mandaluyong City Mayor Benhur Abalos said yesterday that simplifying business registration and permit processing all over the country as advocated by President Benigno Aquino III would bear a concrete result in terms of national economic growth, as it did in his locality which had been the first in the country to have a simplified business processing scheme.

Such simplified transaction has been adopted by the Abalos city government years before Metro Manila mayors drew up a covenant to improve the business environment in their respective localities by simplifying and standardizing business registration and permit processing for new business.

Abalos said their simplified processing has actually translated to added investments and increased revenues, when the city government adopted it.

For this, he said, the World Bank (WB) in a report in 2008 recognized Mandaluyong as the most business friendly city in the country.

The World Bank Group, through its subsidiary, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has cited the City of Mandaluyong as the most business-friendly city in the country and rated it as 35th among 178 global economies in its recent report titled “Doing Business in the Philippines 2008”.

Mandaluyong was specifically cited for ease of transfer of ownership of property, which takes only 21 days here compared to the average of six weeks in other cities. Worth considering is the finding that though Philippine cities share the same legal framework, they differ in implementing national regulations and that affect their competitiveness.

Last year, Metro Manila mayors, led by Abalos, then president of  the League of Cities of Philippines (LCP) president, came out with a covenant to undertake re-engineering of their transaction systems and procedures, including time and motion studies to establish a unified procedure for business in Metro Manila and ensure the completion of simple transactions within five days, and 10 days for complex transactions.

To comply with the provisions of the Anti-Red Tape Law of 2007, the concerned local government units would likewise issue their respective executive orders directing all city departments, offices, and units to implement the standardization of business registration procedures, its policy and operational reforms and guidelines. LCP had its pilot project in Mandaluyong prior to the entry of the covenant