Business registration: PITB coordinates departments for developing one-portal

With a view to improve the ease of doing business, Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) is actively coordinating with the provincial departments for development of one-portal for provincial business registration. The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) senior vice president Almas Hyder disclosed this while talking to Business Recorder here Saturday.
The Lahore Chamber had suggested to the federal and provincial governments to make one electronic portal for business incorporation and departmental registrations where new businesses would just need to enter information once and get all the registrations completed, he said. The Board is now in contact with different departments including Labour, Punjab Employees Social Security Institute and Excise & Taxation for this purpose, he said.
For setting up of a business, one needs to give almost the same information separately on the portals of Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) for company incorporation, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for tax registrations and Employees Old-Age Benefits Institution (EOBI) for social security, he claimed. It results in duplication of information, wastage of precious time and decline in doing business ranking. If properly managed, all registrations can be done in parallel, Hyder maintained.
"We have also asked the provincial government to curtail the frequency of social security payments to quarterly basis which would decrease the number of hours per year that are consumed in paying taxes and improve the doing business ranking in the area of paying taxes" the LCCI senior vice president said.
Hyder said the Chief Minister Punjab has constituted a provincial steering committee on ease of doing business through a notification. The committee has been assigned to review the rules and regulations that need to be changed with necessary recommendations to improve the Pakistan's ease of doing business ranking to 50th, he added. He pointed out that the World Bank Doing Business Report 2016 ranks 189 economies on this index, based on 10 areas of business regulation-starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. The main factors considered for ranking in each of the aforementioned areas are the number of procedures, time and cost. Pakistan stands at 138th position in this ranking, he added.
The business community in Pakistan is a victim of legacy regulations and manual/inefficient working of the government departments. The countries around the world are facilitating their business communities by making simple regulations and online portals to reduce time and avoid the duplication of information, he added.