BoI Mulls Shortened Approval Process for Granting Incentives
by Jennifer A. Ng

The Board of Investments (BoI) is looking at shortening the approval process to one day from the customary 10 days for granting incentives to local and foreign investors.

The shortened period, however, only covers conditional approval of an application and does not yet include the certificate of business registration, Trade Undersecretary and BoI Managing Head Elmer C. Hernandez said.

Under the proposed scheme, it would take an investor a maximum of five days instead of the usual 10 days to complete the business registration process. Mr. Hernandez said the BoI is looking at cutting down the required publication of an application from seven to three days.

“The business registration process was one of the concerns raised by American investors during the President’s recent visit to New York,” Mr. Hernandez said.

He said the reduced processing period is limited too business registrations, adding that the agency would study the possibility of shortening the other processes under BoI.

Mr. Hernandez said the BoI is looking at two modes of approving business registrations—ministerial and discretionary.

Under the ministerial mode, the board will delegate its authority to executive directors to approve a business registration based on a set of guidelines. Under the discretionary mode, the board will have to sit down and discuss whether to approve or disapprove any projects.

The approval process for business registrations that will go through the discretionary mode may take more than five days, Mr. Hernandez said.

He also said the agency has yet to fully determine the approval mode for various industry sectors.

Mr. Hernandez said American investors noted that a longer approval period for business registration adds to the cost of doing business here. Thailand and Indonesia, he said, could approve business registrations within the day.

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Originally published on September 22, 2005, in BusinessWorld, page 2/S1.