Improving Business Registration Procedures at the Sub-National Level : The Case of Lima, Peru
Obtaining an operating license used to be the most bureaucratic procedure when starting a business in Peru, accounting for 62 percent of the total time. In January 2006, with assistance from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Latin America...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/03/9895112/improving-business-registration-procedures-sub-national-level-case-lima-peru http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10715 |
| Summary: | Obtaining an operating license used to
be the most bureaucratic procedure when starting a business
in Peru, accounting for 62 percent of the total time. In
January 2006, with assistance from the International Finance
Corporation (IFC) Latin America and Caribbean (LAC)
technical assistance (TA) facility, the metropolitan
municipality of Lima launched a new process that reduced the
total time needed from 60 to 3 days! In addition, the number
of inspections was reduced from five to just one
multipurpose inspection; average visits by business owners
to the municipality were slashed from 11 to 2; and costs
fell by over 50 percent for small firms. In the nine months
since the reform was introduced, the municipality registered
over 8,314 firms, more than in the last 7 years combined.
Here are four key lessons the authors learned along the way:
1) to promote reforms at the sub-national level, it is
necessary to get the support of the local media to build
awareness of the importance of reducing bureaucratic
barriers; 2) when collecting information for the diagnostic,
you must work jointly with municipal officers to create a
shared understanding of the problem and motivation for
change; 3) to implement the new procedures, municipal
personnel have to be not only technically trained but also
highly motivated and committed; and 4) to avoid the
reappearance of the old bottlenecks in the procedure, it is
critical that the private sector become a sustainability watchdog. |
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