BusinessFacilitation.org

In the context of a global economic slowdown, it is essential to remove unnecessary burdens and disincentive to enterprise activities and to promote the application of existing, affordable solutions to reduce administrative barriers and improve administrative efficiency.

The Better Regulation Programme, launched in 2006 by the European Union, estimated that reducing administrative costs by 25% would produce an increase of 1.5% in GDP. The impact of reducing administrative inefficiency in low-income countries would probably be even higher, since businesses in those countries face on average more than twice the regulatroy burden than their counter-parts in high-income economies when starting a business, transferring property, filing taxes or resolving a commercial dispute through the courts.

Making it easier and less costly for businesses to comply with national rules will encourage more entrepreneurs, especially micro-entrepreneurs, to formally set up their company, employ staff, pay taxes and social benefits, purchase land and build plant facilities, and enable them to take out loans, establish linkages with larger operators and meet government procurement requirements.

Some countries, many of which are developing countries, have designed and implemented good solutions to make administrative procedures swift and transparent for creating companies, registering property, obtaining licenses, work permits and visas, paying taxes, etc. Smart laws and procedures, organizational schemes and e-government tools that have demonstrated their efficiency in one country could be helpful to other countries confronted to the same problems.

Sharing solutions for business facilitation and public investment in administrative efficiency could considerably accelerate the pace and reduce the cost of administrative reform in developing countries.

Objectives of the site

• Promote the dissemination of government solutions to facilitate business for enterprises, and especially SMEs, in developing countries
• Encourage direct cooperation between national administrations and especially south-south cooperation
  

Target audience

• Policy makers and administrators in developing countries looking for business facilitation solutions and for support to implement them
• Policy makers and administrators of countries willing to propose business facilitation solutions
• Donor organisations, willing to finance the implementation of business facilitation solutions in developing countries

Our definition of good practices

We consider a good practice in business facilitation any measure that makes administrative procedures easier for entrepreneurs and enterprises when starting, operating and closing a business.

In our view, measures that facilitate business are those that result in:

• Less interactions imposed on the user of administrative services,
• less time required to complete procedures, and
• a lower volume of information to be provided.

These criteria are largely inspired by the Standard Cost Model (SCM).

Measures that governments can take to facilitate business can be classified in three categories:

1. Regulations, i.e. laws and other normative texts setting the rules;

2. Organisational Schemes, i.e. physical working structures or operational arrangements set up to ensure the delivery of administrative procedures,

3. eTools, i.e. ICT applications functioning between the Government and businesses (G2B) and among Government offices (G2G).

The fields we consider here are those related to the creation, operation and closing of businesses: i.e. registering as a company or as an entrepreneur, business licences, property registration, construction permits, employing workers, visas and residence permits, trading across borders, paying taxes, closing a business, and dealing with intellectual property. Some solutions do not fall exactly in any of these fields but make business procedures in general more transparent, simple and accessible; (transparency, simplification and eGovernment fields).

Functioning of the Portal

For each field, the database gives access to lists of solutions, showing the country which designed the solutions, description, impact, price (if any) and web links. Each solution is detailed in a separate sheet.

Registered users (government officials only) are able to contact directly the owners of the solutions to ask for more information, express interest and/or request support for the implementation of a proposed solution. They are also allowed to propose new best practices for inclusion in the portal.

Donor organisations have the possibility to register a list of countries, fields and categories they are particularly interested in, and to be advised of relevant requests sent through the system.

In addition, the portal gives access to benchmarks, norms, recommendations and landmark studies in the considered fields and categories, as well as to directories of national, regional and international organisations dealing with business facilitation.