The World Bank Group launches their flagship Doing Business Report every year. This report ranks 190 economies relatively on aspects of business regulation and their implications for firm establishment and operations. The report provides quantitative indicators on regulation for 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.
In Doing Business Report 2018, Pakistan slipped by three points and was ranked at 147 out of 190 economies. This deteriorating ranking rang alarm bells in the corridors of the concerned quarters in the government. Pakistan's ranking is calculated from two major cities; Lahore (35%) and Karachi (65%). Since Doing Business Report also takes into account the provincial, sub-national level ranking, therefore, Government of the Punjab decided to design and implement an ambitious Ease of Doing Business Reforms Agenda to improve our sub national performance on Provincial Doing Business Indicators. The reform agenda was designed for implementation after extensive consultation with the relevant stakeholders, private sector and the key implementing agencies.
Ease of Doing Business Reforms Agenda has a high-level political and governmental ownership. At the provincial level, Planning and Development (P&D) Department, Government of the Punjab is working tirelessly to improve the Provincial Doing Business Indicators.
The reform agenda, in Punjab, is driven by a provincial working group which is headed by the Minister for Finance and Chief Secretary, Punjab with representation from heads of all relevant departments/agencies and private sector.
Government of Punjab has been adamant on continuous implementation of transparent, inclusive and effective policies and regulatory practices using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) solutions to facilitate businesses. Government of the Punjab has implemented 15 key reform initiatives in its effort to improve the business climate of the province in the last six months. Some notable initiatives include development of an online business registration portal to register various business entities through which up till now approximately 10,000 business entities have been registered. In order to ease the process of property registration, the time and procedures for registering properties have been reduced to 18 days and 4 procedures only. For the ease of general public, standardized specimen sale deed has been introduced and placed at a dedicated website established for Registration of Deeds. A dedicated complaint management system has also been established to address complaints regarding property registration process for immediate redressal. To facilitate the issuance of building permits, Metropolitan Corporation Lahore in collaboration with Punjab Information Technology Board has started issuing building permits for warehouses from E-khidmat centres. One of the most significant reforms under this indicator is that the Environment Department has waived off the requirement of obtaining No Objection Certificate for selective projects that do not have any significant environmental impact such as warehouses for storage of non-hazardous materials etc., ultimately reducing the time to obtain building permit.
Since all these initiatives are being taken to facilitate the business community at large; therefore, prior consultation with private sector and relevant stakeholders has remained a pivotal part of this reform agenda. Government of Punjab continuously engaged with the private sector and the business community throughout the design and implementation of this reform agenda. The government was also aware of the need for disseminating these reform actions to the private sector. In continuation of these efforts, a number of consultative and feedback sessions were held with private sector to disseminate the reform initiatives that were taken by the government. A Doing Business Exhibition was also organized in March 2018 to showcase the key reform initiatives that were completed under the ambitious Ease of Doing Business Reforms Agenda. Moreover, an extensive print and social media campaign was launched in order to disseminate information regarding the key initiatives being implemented to improve doing business environment of the province at large.
In its efforts to learn from the best practices, P&D Department also established key partnerships with countries such as the United Kingdom and Thailand to learn more about their system and processes to create an enabling business environment. In December 2017, a two-member delegation from Government of Thailand visited Planning & Development Department to share their Doing Business reforms experience. In continuation of its efforts to improve the business environment of the province, Planning & Development Department remained in touch with Regulatory Delivery office of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the UK to seek their technical assistance and to build a long-term partnership through the support of the World Bank and Department for International Development (DFID).
It is imperative to mention that the implementation of such an ambitious and challenging reforms agenda would not have been possible without the efforts of all implementing agencies that were involved in it and it required constant monitoring at the top to ensure the completion of key reform initiatives taken to facilitate businesses in general. As a result of the consistent efforts of the Government of Punjab, this year, Pakistan witnessed an unprecedented increase of 11 points whereby its Doing Business ranking improved from 147 to 136. Such an increase in Pakistan's ranking has never been accomplished since the inception of this report in 2003. At the provincial level, Lahore's Distance to Frontier (DTF) increased notably by 3.17 points and it now stands at 57.99 points. This increase is mainly attributed to the increase in DTF of the two key provincial indicators; Starting a Business, and Registering Property. The DTF of Starting a Business indicator improved by 3.28 points; whereas the DTF of registering property indicator improved substantially by 10.43 points. Furthermore, under the construction permit indicator, building quality control index has improved by 1 point.
As the Doing Business ranking is relative, Government of the Punjab is aware that these reform efforts must continue at a faster pace in order to ensure that Pakistan's ranking keeps on improving in the coming years. The government is also cognizant of the fact that if these efforts are discontinued, or the momentum that has been built over the past few months is not shifted to next gear, we might see our performance and ranking coming down in the coming years. This is a competitive world and countries are reforming their systems at a faster pace; therefore, if we do not match their pace we might be out of the competition very shortly. However, the Government is committed to building on the reform momentum and continuously engage with the public and private sector in order to improve the business environment of the province. The province is progressing towards better regulations and this improvement in the ranking has indicated that the country is moving towards best practices. There are many challenges and uphill tasks such as implementation of new laws, regulations and putting into practice online systems; these tasks need to be implemented in the right and efficient manner in order to sustain the momentum of reforms. The government also takes into account the significance of reaching out to the private sector and propagate the various reform initiatives that have been taken to facilitate the businesses as the reforms and initiatives are meaningless if they are not recognized by the private sector.
(The writer is a civil servant and currently serving as the Secretary, Planning & Development Department, Government of Punjab. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the newspaper)