The Anti-Red Tape Authority and the Department of Trade and Industry on Monday signed a joint memorandum circular to release the results of the first Philippine Ease of Doing Business report by June 2022.
The Philippine EODB Reporting System aims to measure the quality of regulatory practices that impact business climate and EODB in the Philippines across the life cycle of a business.
“We stress the importance of our own tracking of our EODB efforts even outside the World Bank Reporting System because improvement in this area is critical and it redounds to a more comfortable life for our people. With this initiative, ARTA has clearly connected regulatory environment with economic outcomes,” said Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez.
He said the EODB reporting would pick up from where the World Bank left off, after it discontinued the WB EODB Reporting in September 2021 over alleged irregularities in reporting in 2018 and 2020 reports.
“Through this initiative, we can expect better business regulations unriddled with red tape in a sound regulatory environment. More than that, it will inspire in us a mindset for continuous reforms to spur business activity—reforms that keep in step with advances in technology and innovation,” Lopez said.
The agencies said that for the pilot implementation, the Philippine EODB Reporting System would initially generate a baseline measurement based on ARTA’s estimates of the indicators measured by DB report using the World Bank DB scoring system, methodology and assumptions refocused to Philippine setting.
The target stakeholders of the Philippine EODB system ate the national government agencies and local government units.
ARTA, as the implementing agency of the Philippine EODB Reporting System, will oversee the development of the pilot and the succeeding phases of the Philippine EODB Reporting.
It will also speed up the implementation of the Philippine EODB Reporting System and subsequently improve the business climate, encourage investments and promote economic recovery of the country.
“We do believe that by contextualizing our measurement and our surveys, we will be able to have a more responsive and more contextualized competition, not only against our neighboring countries in the region but more so within our localized context,” said ARTA director-general Jeremiah Belgica.
