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ENHANCING
THE CITY’S INVESTMENT-FRIENDLY
IMAGE THROUGH SIMPLIFICATION OF
CIVIL APPLICATIONS PROCESSING
Background
Being an
investment-friendly city has always
been one of the goals of the City
of Mandaue. Considering that income
generation depends largely on
the contribution of the commercial
and industrial sector, the city
has to formulate and adopt policies
that allow the commercial and
industrial establishments to do
business in the city less expensive.
The City of Mandaue posted a growth
rate of 13% for the year 2002
in the commercial and industrial
sector. The city is host to about
10,000 commercial and industrial
establishments in 2002. Catering
therefore to the Business Permit
needs of these establishments,
with the least possible bureaucratic
movements, was a challenge that
needed to be faced. And the city
indeed faced the challenge head-on.
From an average of seven (7) working
days Business Permit processing
time, the city was able to trim
down the processing time to just
forty (40) minutes. This year,
with the establishment of a VIRTUAL
ONE STOP SHOP, aided by its Information
Technology Program, the city has
the capability to process Business
Permits in just five (5) minutes.
Streamlining the civil applications
systems and procedures, which
the city started sometime June
2002, was a response to two major
milestone declarations. Her Excellency,
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s
Anti-Red Tape Program, which she
forcefully put forward last July
23, 2001, during her 2001 State
of the Nation Address, encouraged
the city to start its own Anti-Red
Tape Program. The desire to devise
an investment-friendly civil applications
systems and procedures became
even more earnest when, in the
following year, the city was one
of the signatories of the League
of Cities’ Good Urban Governance
(GUG) Campaign.
Sometime April of 2002, the City
Administrator of the City of Mandaue
prepared a Program Proposal on
an “Integrated Approach
for the Implementation of the
Anti-Red Tape Program” initiative.
The Proposal was an offshoot to
the April 19, 2002 meeting
with the Management Association
of the Philippines (MAP) and the
Department of Interior and Local
Government (DILG). The Program
was envisioned to:
- find
innovative approaches to formulating
client-friendly systems and
procedures in civil applications,
specially the Business Permit
Systems
- formulate innovative concepts
in Program and Project Planning
with the technical assistance
of the Management Association
of the Philippines to enhance
the competitiveness of the city
- undertake an organizational
review of the entire bureaucracy
with the end in view of making
it more responsive to the needs
of the clients
- formulate and advocate, at
the national level, for policy
changes that are needed to reinvent,
for the better, civil applications
systems and procedures
- come up with a model for a
more effective and efficient
civil applications processing
The
Program was allocated a total budget
of P1,240,800.00.
The present, streamlined civil applications
systems and procedures of the city
is a commitment to both the President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's State
Of Nation Address and the Good Urban
Governance Campaign. It is the city's
way of reciprocating the investments
exposure and dynamism of the city's
present 10,000 commercial and industrial
establishments. It is one of our
come-ons to attract more investments
into the city.
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