Government Streamlines Corporate
Application Process to Boost Competitiveness
To
address the poor rating of Taiwan’s business start-up conditions as presented
in the World Bank’s “Doing Business
2008”
report, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) recently called
a meeting of representatives from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Council of
Labor Affairs, Ministry of the Interior, and Taipei and Kaohsiung governments to
organize a “Working Group for the Simplification of Enterprise Application
Processes” to shorten the legal time limit for company establishment and
review the feasibility of streamlining related procedures. The aim of this
effort is to improve the situation within a short time, raise
Taiwan
’s
position in the World Bank’s start-up ranking, and make it easier for foreign
companies to do business on the island.
The
CEPD points out that Taiwan was ranked in 50th place among 178
countries in overall ease of doing business, but that in the business start-up
index it was ranked 103rd. This index includes the number of items in
the start-up application process, time needed, cost, and minimum capital
requirement. The report pointed out that compared with neighboring countries and
areas, the time needed to set up a company in
Taiwan
is relatively long.
At
the first meeting of the working group it was discovered that the actual time
needed for the different agencies to process business establishment applications
was much less than that published in the World Bank report. The main reason for
the difference was that in its calculations the World Bank used the time limit
required by
Taiwan
’s
laws, which does not faithfully reflect the time actually used by the different
agencies.
In
the World Bank’s report, for instance, the time required to set up a business
in
Taiwan
is given as seven days. This is the same as the legal requirement, but the time
actually required for the Ministry of Economic Affairs to complete the process
is only one or two days, leaving a gap of at least five days. Nevertheless,
review and shortening of start-up time is one of the main tasks of the working
group, and the CEPD will solicit ideas on how to do this from the various
agencies in charge. The Economics Ministry has been asked to refer to the
practices of advanced countries and of countries at a similar stage of
development as
Taiwan
regarding the minimum capital requirement, and the group will address this issue
in the future. For further information, please check this website: http://www.cepd.gov.tw/m1.aspx?sNo=0009252
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