Group Blog – CLAVE

Parañaque, as a first-class highly urbanized city, envisions to be a “model of academic excellence, public health and safety, environmental preservation and good governance, providing equal opportunities for all, in a peaceful and business-friendly atmosphere through a God-centered leadership.”

With the mission of emerging as a primary investment and tourist destination in Metro Manila through the creation of a business friendly and academically excellent city whilst exhibiting good governance and public order as well as livelihood, housing and health programs. With this in mind, it is the collective decision of this group to look unto the business friendliness and competitiveness, a dimension in the Seal of Good Local Governance, as the city’s focus reflected in the vision and mission of this city, focusing on the streamlining of business permits and other licenses.

Streamlining the business permit and licensing system (BPLS) would result to a yield in the registration of new or formerly informal businesses, creation of new businesses and to generate additional revenue which would consequently result to employment opportunities and social benefits for the population. Improving this service to businesses will ultimately improve the investment and business climate in the LGU through the reduction of administrative costs, bureaucratic procedures and delays that impedes or discourages business registration or start-up.

Past and Current BPLS in Parañaque

Before the administration of incumbent Mayor Edwin Olivarez, it would take thirty three days to start a business in Parañaque City. In fact, according to the study Doing Business in the Philippines 2008 by the World Bank, Parañaque City ranked 8th among the cities in Metro Manila in the ease of starting a business.

The current Paperless Application System in Business Permit Renewal was developed with the goal of streamlining government transactions in all departments and offices of the Parañaque City government, and was fully adopted in January 2016. Since the system is fully computerized, all necessary information is accessible to both taxpayer and BPLO via a secure database, where the information is encoded and stored. Under this system the information may be easily accessed and reviewed, or if needed, updated and modified. The said system benefits over 20,000 registered establishments, and is consistent with the standard processing time as well as the five-step standard in applying for business permit renewal.

The image below shows a comparison of the procedure in securing business permit (renewal) from 2014-2015 (before the paperless system was introduced) vs 2015-2016. The process further reduces the delays by phasing out the need for an application form and reducing the need for transacting through numerous windows and steps.

(taken from PAPERLESS APPLICATION IN BUSINESS PERMIT RENEWAL PROCESS in Parañaque City)

Stakeholder Analysis

Based on the 2009 study done by Ateneo School of Government entitled Business Registration Process Quality and Management Survey, a percentage of 40% satisfaction rate among businessmen respondents said that they spent 1-3 days in securing their business permits in the city. However, in the 2016 survey conducted by the National Competitiveness Council, the client satisfaction has increased. The Overall Customer Satisfaction Scores for New Business Registration in Parañaque City is 6.73 out of 10, which clearly shows an increase from 40% in 2009 to almost 70% in 2016. In accordance to the Compliance and Citizen Satisfaction Survey of the CSC and Bantay.ph that looks at client satisfaction, transparency, process flow and compliance to ARTA standards, the city, as the first to establish a paperless system in the renewal of business permits was ranked as the highest in NCR. Garnering the score of 90.7 or 4.5 stars, the city emerged at the top.

c) SWOT Analysis

Strengths	Weaknesses
-Paperless system phased out the application form -Eradicated the need to transact through different windows -Removes unnecessary and repetitive steps (encoding data from written application form).	-Confidential information of businesses stored in one database
Opportunities	Threats
-Modernizing the process -Improving standard and sets example for other cities-Will encourage investments and business start-ups -Increased employment, social benefits, and revenues -Concise and efficient data storage	-Security and Confidentiality of data

In summary, the group plans to look at the BPLS of the City of
Parañaque and delve into the intricacies of the process as well as the changes implemented from the old to the paperless process. As part of our Governance project, we aim to compare the systems and analyse the effects of such change to the business atmosphere and competitiveness of the city as well as to provide further recommendations as to improve the BPLO in the said city.