DAVAO CITY—The city’s Business Bureau expressed optimism of a still healthy business climate here following a record-breaking turnout of businesses applying for annual renewal of their permits.
Business Bureau Head Maribel Paguican said a total of 4,225 business owners in Davao City have already registered as of the second day of the One Stop Shop Business Permit renewal, which is higher than last year’s record in the same period.
Each day also broke the day-by-day record of the previous year, she added,
“For the first day, we had 1,845. Last year we had 1,480. For the second day we had 2,380 compared to 2, 128 last year,” she said.
“These are an indication that we are surviving, in fact, I can say that we are recovering because of the increasing trend during the two days of the application for renewal,” Paguican said.
The city would expect at least 46,000 clients that renewed their permits last year to apply again this year. She said they would expect new and more establishments to register this year as residents became entrepreneurs during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We are happy to note that the pandemic, somehow, did not affect our economy. In fact it provided another opportunity because many businesses have sprouted, conforming to the situation,” Paguican said.
The city has designed the one-stop shop payment system to cater to online, manual and hybrid system, “where one can do it partially online and also manual,” she added. “We are proud to announce that the city is complying with our RA 11032, the ease of doing business, we have an online platform and we also implement one-time assessment and payment.”
She said that with the one-time assessment and payment system, fees for the Bureau of Fire Protection and Barangay Clearance are already incorporated in one receipt, and the office will just remit the fees due to the agency and barangay concerned.
Paguican added that they considered the clamor of the clients who cannot do purely online payment and extended their services in 10 satellite areas for the manual processing of renewal.
“As much as possible we really encourage they do it online, but since this is implemented for the first time, there would be hesitation on the part of our clients. We dwell with that. In fact, it’s very tedious on our part because there are 10 locations, as far as Marilog and Paquibato. We co-locate there, imagine the area is far, but we are there because we want to give services as near as possible to our clients so that they will not be burdened to travel in order to make the process faster),” she added.
Paguican said that the assigned areas are divided to cater to clients per district: Sangguniang Panlungsod- Poblacion District, SM Ecoland-2nd Floor Annex Building-Talomo and Agdao Districts; Calinan Gym-Calinan District; Bunawan Gym-Bunawan District; Buhangin Gym-Buhangin District; Tugbok District Treasury Office-Tugbok District; Toril District Treasury Office-Toril District; Marilog District Treasury Office and Paquibato District Treasury Office- Paquibato District.; Baguio District Treasury Office- Baguio District.
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