The Philippines jumped 29 places in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report after implementing several reforms and requesting for data correction.
The country ranked 95th among 190 economies surveyed in the 2020 report, up from its 124th spot in 2019 as its EODB score increased 5.12 points from 57.68 to 62.8.
“The road to 95 was challenging much like climbing Mount Everest. We worked fast, and scaled up our reform initiatives. For the DB 2020 cycle, team Philippines submitted 53 reforms/data correction requests to the World Bank. All 11 data correction requests were considered but only 9/42 reforms were accepted,” Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said in a news briefing Thursday.
Lopez said the double-digit improvement was made more significant as the World Bank cited the Philippines as one of 42 economies which implemented regulatory reforms not only in one but in more than three topics which resulted in significant improvements in the EODB scores.
The Philippines was among the top three gainers among the 190 economies covered by the study. In terms of rank, the Philippines was the third biggest gainer, next to Togo which climbed by 40 notches and Saudi Arabia which jumped 30 places. The Philippines moved up at the same rate with Jordan.
Among ASEAN, the Philippines’ recorded the highest improvement, both in rank and EODB score, followed by Myanmar which rose from 171st to 165th with an EODB score from 44.72 to 46.8.
The last time the Philippines ranked 95th “• the highest spot it held, so far”•was in t2014. The latest DB 2020 cycle increase was the highest recorded improvement since 2010.
Among the topics that helped the Philippines land the in top 100 countries include dealing with construction permits by the Quezon City government; getting electricity by Manila Electric Company; registering property by Land Registration Authority and the QC government; getting credit by Credit Information Corp. and private sector organizations like TransUnion, BAP Credit Inc.; protecting minority investors by the Securities and Exchange Commission; paying taxes by the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Social Security Services, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG; trading across borders by the Bureau of Customs; enforcing contracts by the SEC and Supreme Court; resolving insolvency by the Supreme Court; and logistics services sector.
According to the study, the Philippines performed best in three topics: getting credit from an EODB score of 5 to 40; protecting minority investors, from EODB score 43.33 to 60; and dealing with construction permits, from 68.58 to 70.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the Philippines has the chance to further improve its rankings next year once a new law expanding the access of micro, small and medium enterprises to lending facilities is fully implemented.
Dominguez said Republic Act 11057 or the Personal Property Security Act would help propel the Philippines to a higher ranking in the Doing Business 2021 report with the law’s implementing rules and regulations soon to take effect.
“With the PPSA in place, MSMEs can register their movable assets such as inventory with the Land Registration Authority and use those assets as collateral in accessing formal sources of financing,” Dominguez said.
“This is among the reforms we are pursuing to further improve our business climate and empower small entrepreneurs,” he said. With Julito G. Rada