PRESIDENT Duterte has to first appoint the director general of the Anti-Red Tape Authority (Arta) before the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) law is implemented.
This was according to Trade Undersecretary Rowel S. Barba, who heads the Department of Trade and Industry’s Competitiveness Bureau (DTI-CB) tasked to draft the implementing rules and regulation (IRR) of the EODB law. He said the President must appoint the Arta chief before October 22 for the IRR to take effect.
“The UP [University of the Philippines] law center is conducting legal scrubbing and we hope to get the vetted IRR within the week. So far we are on schedule,” Barba told the BusinessMirror.
“However, there is a view that the IRR cannot be issued without the Arta or the director general at the very least. Hence, we have emphasized the need to appoint the director general before October 22,” he added.
The deadline for the IRR of the EODB law, a landmark measure aimed at cutting red tape in government transactions, is set on October 22. Businessmen and policy-makers alike have been insisting that the DTI-CB issue the IRR the soonest, but Barba said his unit cannot do so, as the Arta director general has to be named first.
He revealed the DTI-CB then will not release the IRR by October 22 and will instead submit the document to the Office of the President (OP).
“We will submit [it] to the OP, but will not release since it is the Arta which should promulgate the IRR. The DTI-CB is only a temporary secretariat which is not authorized to issue the IRR,” Barba explained.
The EODB law is seen to boost the country’s ranking in global competitiveness surveys. It will help entice more investors to do business here, as it will cut down procedures in transacting with the government.
The EODB law states the simple transactions have to be finished within three working days; complex transactions seven working days; and highly technical transactions 20 working days. It also trimmed the number of signatories for several documents.