Parañaque eases doing business in the city

MANILA, Philippines – The Parañaque City government has introduced a new scheme to make it easier to do business in the city.

The new scheme is a paperless application for the renewal of permits, its top official said.

In a statement announcing the new scheme, Mayor Edwin Olivarez said all business owners  renewing their business permits for 2016 no longer need to fill up an application form.

“No more application form,” he said.

Instead, Olivarez said under the new scheme, assessors from the Business Permits and Licensing Office (BPLO) would just download the business firm’s  data from the database and show it to the taxpayer.

If there is no change in their details, assessment can proceed without delay, thus saving time and effort for both the taxpayer and government.

Olivarez said the paperless application system is part of their program to streamline government transactions in all city hall offices.

“We are now considering the cashless transactions while paying quarterly and annual taxes to avoid red tape and corruption,” he said.

As of December last year, there are some 20,000 registered business establishments in Parañaque.

Olivarez said the BPLO, headed by Melanie

Malaya, is now fully computerized. This means the information needed to process their application is now easily accessible from the database.

He highlighted the city’s anti-corruption efforts and noted the Civil Service Commission and Bantay.ph an anti-corruption watchdog, ranked the Parañaque BPLO as No. 1 in Anti-Red Tape Act (ARTA) Compliance among 16 cities in the National Capital Region in a recently concluded ARTA Compliance and Citizen Satisfaction Survey.

According to the survey, the Parañaque BPLO got an over-all score of 90.7 or 4.5 stars to emerge as the most compliant in Metro Manila in eliminating red tape and corruption in the process of securing a business permit and other licenses.

All Metro Manila cities were surveyed on the basis of transparency, process flow, compliance with ARTA standards, and the presence of fixers.

With their paperless system, Olivarez said the city is also able to help the environment.

“We save more tree, thus there is this added benefit to the planet,” he aid.

Furthermore, he said that with their simplified four-step process, Parañaque taxpayers are assured of customer-friendly transaction and a hassle-free process that would save the taxpayers time and money.