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TRADE Secretary Ramon M. Lopez said an online portal for business registration for some government documents required for business registration could be up and running early next year.

Speaking with BusinessWorld, Mr. Lopez said that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is collaborating with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT). The DICT had committed to complete an online Business Portal for permits and documents needed to register businesses.

“We’re working with DICT so hopefully by next year… They said by February they will launch the online (portal) up to a certain point… covering from SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) registration, DTI to the Social Security System (SSS) up to the mayors’ business permit,” he said.

Mr. Lopez said the DTI is currently in talks with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to include its reqirements for businesses in the online portal. He added, “Ang kulang na lang ay yung BIR (Whta’s missing so far is the BIR). We are also talking with the BIR para maisama na sila din sila sa (So we can include them) online so we can say that this will be an end-to-end registration.”

The target for the Business Portal is to streamline the business registration process to one hour, the DTI said in August.

That month, the DTI said it will be piloting its National Business One-Stop Shop (NBOSS) before the rollout of the online end-to-end registration system.

NBOSS includes the services of the SEC, SSS, BIR, Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG), and the local government units (LGUs).

NBOSS cuts the busines registration process to five steps and promises a transaction period of three to six days. — Gillian M. Cortez

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