Around 20 government agencies are expected to go online under the Asean Single Window platform in the first half of 2018 to improve the business climate in the country, the Department of Finance said Thursday.
A report by an anti-red tape team to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III during the recent DoF Executive Committee meeting that the agencies were anticipated to go online between the first and second quarters next year.
The DOF’s anti-red tape team is led by Undersecretary and chief economist Gil Beltran.
The ASW gateway, a regional initiative that aims to speed up cargo clearances and promote economic integration by enabling the electronic exchange of border documents among the organization’s 10 member-states, is being tested this month.
The Finance Department said it would harrness the power of digital technology to implement three major initiatives to improve the ease of doing business in the country.
These are the TradeNet platform for traders, the establishment of the Philippine Business Data Bank down to the local government level and a parallel modernization initiative in the DOF and the Bureau of Internal Revenue and Bureau of Customs.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology and the Department of the Interior and Local Government will hold a live demonstration on Philippine Business Data Bank to local government units on Nov. 28. The DILG is in-charge of logistics, while DICT is in-charge of the program flow.
The Finance Department’s technology modernization architect Dr. Dennis Reyes said there were multiple initiatives ongoing under the Anti-Red Tape Program.
Reyes was present during a public forum organized by the National Competitiveness Council to discuss the Philippines’ efforts to further improve its current ranking in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index.
Reyes said the TradeNet platform, which would also serve as the Philippines link to the ASW gateway, would be up and running by the end of the year and would later place onboard a total of 66 government agencies “progressively over the course of the next two to three years.”
The PBDB will involve the Department of Trade and Industry, which chairs the NCC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the country’s economic zones and over 1,600 local government units, Reyes said.
The data bank will allow the online processing of business permits by LGUs as a part of the Duterte administration’s continuing initiatives to improve the ease of doing business in the country. Beltran said TradeNet.gov.ph wouuld allow traders to use the system to apply for import and export permits initially for rice, sugar, used motor vehicles, chemicals (toluene), frozen meat medicines (for humans, animals or fish) and cured tobacco.
TradeNet is expected “to shorten the processing time of import/export clearances, reduce the number of transactions and required documents to be submitted, and remove bureaucratic red-tape that has plagued businesses and citizens when dealing with the government.”