Cebu City Mayor elect Edgardo Labella. | CDN File Photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines – Cebu City Mayor elect Edgardo Labella is looking forward to extending the validity of business permits issued to businesses in the city to a period of two years to entice more investors to pour their money here.
Labella said that having a business friendly environment will surely attract more investments and keep the city’s existing businesses.
“We have to make the impression that Cebu is business friendly,” he said.
Labella said he wanted to make it a priority of his administration to find means that will allow the extension of the validity of business permits to two years instead of just one year.
By implementing said extension, business permit applicants will no longer have to crowd the City Treasurer’s Office January of each year.
“Kay ako man gung nakita nga maghuot gyud ang mga tao maglinya para sa business permit,” said Labella.
(I get to see that people would always crowd (City Hall) for business permit renewals.)
CTO said in an earlier interview that there are now around 39, 000 registered business operating in the City.
This year, their office processed applications for the renewal of business permits from January 4 to 24. Those who failed to meet the January 25 deadline were meted with a 25 percent surcharge computed based on the total assessment, a two percent interest per month and late securing fee.
Applicants were required to present their application form and the preceding year’s income tax return with financial statements duly received by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). They were also asked to submit their preceding year’s sales journal or percentage tax returns for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd quarters of the year and for the months of October and November 2018.
But since applicants can no longer be accommodated at City Hall, CTO opened an extension office in a Cebu City mall to accept and process applications for business permit renewal./dcb