How a public-private partnership is trying to turn Metro Manila into a startup city

MANILA, Philippines – Metro Manila can prosper as a startup city if not for the excessive bureaucratic processes for setting up a new business.

Jay Fajardo, executive director of QBO Innovation, said on Rappler’s Be The Good that aired on September 13, that hurdles brought about by the government bureaucracy dissuade founders from registering their businesses.

Startups are growing businesses and ventures with the potential to expand from a small customer base to large-scale users, reaching up to a hundred thousand, in a small amount of time. This ability to rapidly scale up is enabled by technology, particularly software platforms, and applications that can reach broader audiences. 

Fajardo brings up the process of applying for business permits in cities or municipalities, which in the Philippines tend to take inordinately long. He differentiates this from Singapore, where it only takes one day to incorporate. 

“This is also why Singapore’s innovation quotient is very high. There are actually so many people who are operating here but are registered there,” said Fajardo during the interview.

He also points out rules like the requirement for every business to have a fire extinguisher, and the prohibition against multiple companies using the same address, a restriction that makes co-working spaces tricky to set up.

“Those things are not compatible with the nature of the dynamics of fast-moving startups,” he said. 

Fajardo believes that these hindrances could be resolved through a partnership with the local government units (LGU), leading to easier development of startups and encouraging more emerging entrepreneurs to start their businesses. This is likewise the core objective of the new government and private sector initiative: Strategic and Collaborative Alliance for Leveraging Ecosystems of Startups – National Capital Region (SCALE NCR). 

SCALE  is a program initiated by the Department of Science and Technology to enhance the startup ecosystem by collaborating with Technology Business Incubators (TBIs) at universities in Metro Manila. Together, these various institutes aim to equip startup founders with the knowledge and connections to make their businesses