The Department of Finance (DOF) has so far engaged 65 of the country’s 76 government regulatory agencies that are required to go online to streamline applications for permits on imports and exports in line with the Duterte administration’s goal of improving the ease of doing business.
DOF Undersecretary Gil Beltran also said the initial tests on the country’s interconnection with other ASEAN economies, starting with Indonesia via the ASEAN Single Window (ASW), had been successful, with “development and testing to continue in the next few weeks.”
The ASW is a regional initiative that aims to speed up cargo clearances and promote economic integration by enabling the electronic exchange of border documents among the organization’s 10 member-states. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are already using the ASW to exchange information on customs clearances.
Beltran said the ASW’s interconnection tests will run until May 2018 for newly connected countries Philippines, Cambodia and Brunei.
In the Philippines, a National Single Window (NSW) was set up by the DOF in partnership with the Department of Information Technology (DICT) through the TradeNet platform, which will involve a total of 76 agencies to make it fully operational.
The TradeNet platform for traders, which will also serve as the Philippines link to the ASEAN Single Window (ASW) gateway, was launched last December and is expected to minimize the costs of doing business and cut the processing time for the issuance of import and export permits, Beltran said.
“Although there were some gaps in the responses between the two systems, the initial testing on the ASW connection with Indonesia was successful,” said Beltran in his report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III during a recent DOF Executive Committee meeting.
Beltran said the Bureau of Customs (BOC) is set to identify five exporters who will pilot test TradeNet this month, while a team will do a demonstration on the Integrated Importer Accreditation Module, which aims to simplify the accreditation process for importers. This module will later link accreditation records of regulatory agencies to the BOC records to form a full importer profile, he added.
Besides TradeNet, the DOF implemented several innovations in 2017 anchored on the use of digital technology to improve the ease of doing business and electronically interconnect with other member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to help speed up the region’s economic integration.
These innovations include the establishment of the Philippine Business Data Bank (PBDB); the ongoing computerization program at the Department and the Bureaus of Internal Revenue (BIR) and of Customs (BOC); and the continuing efforts to reduce the procedures and requirements in securing government documents or applications.
Beltran said the PBDB, now piloted in Quezon City, will eventually allow the online processing of business permits down to the local government level and targets to cover all 1,634 local government units nationwide within a two-year period.
“Economic zone data will likewise be progressively be made available covering all economic zones in the country,” Beltran has said.
Beltran said the precursor to the PBDB—the Online Unified Business Permit Application Form—is now being fine-tuned to further simplify the process and allow businesses to apply for LGU business permits regardless of location.
He said the DOF and other involved agencies are now “finalizing the data elements” for the online business permit application form so it could be pilot-tested by the first quarter of this year.
Beltran said TradeNet.gov.ph—the digital portal to the NSW—will allow traders to initially use the system to apply for import and export permits for rice, sugar, used motor vehicles, chemicals (toluene), frozen meat medicines (for humans, animals or fish) and cured tobacco.
As the vehicle for the NSW, TradeNet is expected “to shorten the processing time of import/export clearances, reduce the number of transactions and required documents to be submitted, and remove bureaucratic red-tape that has plagued businesses and citizens when dealing with the government.”
Initially, 16 government agencies were connected online to TradeNet.
These include, among others, the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), National Tobacco Administration (NTA), Fair Trade and Enforcement Bureau (FTEB), National Food Authority (NFA), Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI), Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS), BIR and BOC.
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