Doing Business in the Philippines

Doing Business in the Philippines 2008 compares business regulations across 21 Philippine cities in three key areas: starting a business, dealing with licenses, and registering property. These indicators cover areas of local jurisdiction or practice. The report shows that differences in regulations and practices -- or in the implementation of national-level regulations -- can enhance or constrain local business activity. It suggests that Philippine cities can rapidly improve competitiveness by adopting good practices already in place elsewhere in the country.

Main findings:

  • Cities in the Philippines are already competitive in terms of the time required to change the title of a property. It takes on average 32 days to register property across the 21 cities, ranking 56th when compared with 178 economies globally.
  • Philippine cities do not rank well against global benchmarks in terms of the number of procedures to start a business or secure construction licenses.
  • There are wide differences in the number of procedures, time, and cost to start a business: it takes 27 days in Taguig and 52 in Manila.
  • Local requirements are responsible for a significant variance in the number of steps required to obtain construction-related authorizations. It is easiest in Taguig, with 23 procedures, but more cumbersome in Mandaue and Pasig, with 33 procedures.
  • While it takes eight procedures to register property in all 21 cites, different local practices of the local offices of national agencies are behind a wide variation in time and cost: 21 days in Mandaluyong compared to six weeks in Mandaue.

Data snapshots



Downloads

New! Doing Business in Philippines (PDF, 2.3MB)
Press release (Word, 100KB)
Presentation (PPT, 2.5MB)

Simulate reforms

New! How would a city's ranking change if it reformed? See the impact of reforms by using the ranking simulator (Excel, 55KB) to change indicator values. This exercise assumes that other cities don't reform.