MANILA, Aug. 9 -- President Rodrigo Duterte has reminded government agencies dealing with businesses to cut red tape and urged businessmen to report those who are engaged in corruption.
“Corruption is really one I don’t like,” Pres. Duterte said during his keynote address to businessmen at the 2017 Sulong Pilipinas, a Philippine Development Forum at the EDSA Shangri-la on Wednesday.
In order to make government transactions faster, Pres. Duterte said he wants to group government offices in one building.
“If you cannot group together, I will force the online,” he said. “If I said 15 days, do it 15 days," he added in Filipino.
Pres. Duterte ordered for faster processing of documents in government offices as he emphasized that making it harder for businesses and individuals to transact make the government “useless”.
During the event, one of the recommendations from the private sector is to further ease doing business by converging different agencies, including local government units. It was also in last year’s Sulong Pilipinas that the 10-point socioeconomic agenda of the Duterte administration was presented.
In the latest Doing Business Report of the World Bank, the Philippines ranked 99, moving up four notches from rank 103 in the 2015 report.
However, the same report noted that in Starting a Business indicator, the country’s ranking declined by six spots, from 165th spot to 171st spot. (PNA)
