More risks than ease to do business in the Phl

There is no dearth of proposed legislations that were pushed in Congresses past to promote “ease of doing business” in the Philippines. In fact and in truth, many of these measures have been approved into law and are being enforced already.

The latest of these is Republic Act (RA) No. 11032, or the Ease of Doing Business and Efficient Government Service Delivery Act of 2018. Called for short as Ease of Doing Business Law, it intended to make the process of setting up and starting a business in the Philippines easier for investors. Precisely, the goal is to increase the country’s competitiveness and attractiveness to foreign investors.

Signed into law by former president Rodrigo Duterte, RA 11032 created for this purpose the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) to implement and oversee a national policy on red tape. RA 11032 essentially is a revamped version of RA 9485, or the Anti-Red Tape Act of 2007. While most of RA 9485 remained intact, RA 11032 expanded its coverage.

The ARTA was further mandated to implement various reform initiatives to combat red tape in frontline services in all government offices, agencies, local government units (LGUs), including every single office, agency and government-owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) as well as consular offices and Philippine embassies abroad.

Despite this widened coverage for the ARTA to ensure effective implementation of the Ease of Doing Business Law at the Executive branch, there are other activities that cause equally damaging delays, if not bottlenecks and disincentives to prospective investors. And these are also happening in the offices, activities and processes being done at the two other co-equal branches of the government, namely, the Legislative and the Judiciary.

Worse, the same nightmares of doing business happen also to many private companies and corporations that get into business with the government.

Take the situation of Comelec Chairman George Garcia who has to put up with politics-driven bidding war on the new automated election system (AES) being readied for use in the May 2025 elections. The poll body is being dragged by rivals of Smartmatic, which is participating again in the Comelec