It's easiest to start a business in Taguig City, fastest to hurdle construction licensing requirements in Makati City and Marikina City, and quickest to register real property in Mandaluyong City, according to a new study by International Finance Corp.
The study, "Doing Business in the Philippines 2008," the first sub-national report of the World Bank's private sector arm IFC in partnership with the National Competitiveness Council and the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center, compared business regulations in 21 major Philippine cities, using quantitative yardsticks that can also be benchmarked with global best practices.
"There is no one city that was good in all areas of doing business. This is both a challenge and opportunity for local governments to apply best practices," IFC resident representative Jessie Ang said at the launch of the study Monday.
The report covered three areas of regulation-starting a business, dealing with licenses, and registering property.
According to the study, starting a business in the 21 cities takes an average of 18 procedures, 11 of which are required the national government and seven by local governments. The study on this category measured all the necessary steps to enable a small or medium-scale enterprise in a general commercial or industrial activity to operate legally in these 21 cities-including all permits, inscriptions, notifications and inspections.
The best performer in supporting business startups was Taguig, where it takes about 15 procedures and 27 days to register a new business. Lapu-Lapu City in Cebu province was second, with 16 procedures taking an average of 33 days. Marikina was third, with 15 procedures taking about 28 days.
Manila, which represents the Philippines in the World Bank's annual global competitiveness survey across 178 economies, was 16th in the sub-national survey. It has about 15 procedures that take an average of 52 days to start a business.
If Taguig were to represent the Philippines in the global survey in terms of number of days to start a business, it would rank 76th out of 178 countries. With editing by INQUIRER.net.
