| Photo by Mary Rose Sagarino
MANDAUE CITY, Cebu–The effort of the Mandaue City government to simplify the process of applying for business permits has encouraged more investors to register their businesses at City Hall.
Lawyer Lizer Malate, head of the Mandaue City Business Permit Licensing Office (BPLO), reported a 41 percent increase in the number of business permits that they issued this year as compared to the number that was reported in the last two years.
BPLO data show that from January to August 2020, the city issued a total of 14, 274 business permits. This was 41 percent more than the number of permits issued during the same period in 2019 and 2018 at 10, 105 and 8, 610 respectively.
“Pagsulod nato no, ato gyud gi restructure ang processing, diba from 16 to 19 steps, gihimo nato’ng 3 steps nalang: application, assessment, issuance na dayun. Sa una paabot pa man tog regulatory clearances karun dili naman. Post-audit na ta ana. Mao sad siguro’ng nisaka sad ta.”, Malate said.
(When I assumed office, I worked to restructure the application process from 16 to 19 steps and now to only 3 steps: application, assessment, issuance (of business permits). In the past, applicants were required to submit regulatory clearances, but that is no longer the case now. We only do post-audit. This could be the reason for the increase in the number of applicants.)
Malate said that the increase also translates to an increase in the city’s tax collection. For the first eight months of 2020, BPLO already collected more than P1 billion in taxes, the majority of which was collected prior to the January deadline for the submission of business permit applications.
Last year’s collection, on the other hand, only amounted to P900 million while the 2018 collection reached P756 million.
He said that their collection could still increase if all of the 700 businesses that were issued notices of violation would already start to process their business permit renewals.
Read: 700 Mandaue City businesses told to get new permits
“Karun naka issue natag more than 700 notices, tag unom ka tuig walay renew-renew. I got a news nga naay usa mubayad na gyud siya almost 350 thousand kay pila ka tuig walay bayad bayad. Bayad na siya ron mao na ato’ng nakita, efficient enforcement of business regulations.”
(We were already able to issue 700 notices after years of allowing these businesses to operate in the absence of a valid permit. I received news that one business owner has already expressed plans to pay the P350, 000 tax due that ahs accumulated for years. I would say that the efficient enforcement of business regulations helped.) / dcb