Business Registration

Business registration improves access to credit for SMEs, and strengthens the private sector. It also helps formalise the economy which delivers important benefits to government and civil society.

ICF supported the Government of Burkina Faso's efforts to improve business registration, as well as simplify the application process for construction permits.

One-stop shops for business registration and licensing known as Centres de Formalités des Entreprises (CEFORE), and similar one-stop shops for construction permits know as Centres de Formalités des Actes de Construire (CEFAC) were established that have been very successful in reducing the costs and delays.

Between 2008 and 2010, the number of procedures needed to register a business has been reduced from six to four, taking three days instead of 18 and costing US$106 instead of US$350. For construction permits, the number of procedures has been reduced from 32 to 15, taking 19 days instead of 226 and costing US$480 instead of US$2,270.

A partnership between the government of Cape Verde and ICF enhanced administrative services for business registration, licensing and closure.

The project established an electronic one-stop-shop for business life-cycle services by incorporating licensing and closure services into the existing 'e-government' system and extending the reach of the one-stop shop 'Business in a Day' service centres across the country.

The initiative reduced the time taken to license various business activities (wholesale and retail trading, tourism and travel agency, construction and industrial) from 15-30 days to two-ten days.

ICF’s project with Liberia’s Government to facilitate business registration helped rationalise and speed up the process of registering businesses, thereby helping to formalise commercial access to land and finance. Reducing the time, expense and complexity associated with registering a business helps improve access to credit, particularly for SMEs, strengthen the private sector and formalise the economy (with important benefits to both government and civil society).

The project established a modern business registry with benefits including easier company registration through simplified and decentralised processes, the formalisation of businesses that are, in turn, able to formally employ workers and opportunities for enhanced growth and development of domestic enterprises through increased access to finance.

ICF is working in partnership with the Government of Mozambique to improve business life-cycle services in the tourism industry. The project will streamline business registration and licensing procedures for tourism enterprises in five geographic locations identified by the Government as Tourism Investment Areas (TIAs), dramatically reducing the time and costs associated with doing business in the sector.

The twelve month project, in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism, will enable five existing one-stop-shops to become regional centres for licensing and registration services in the tourism industry. The one-stop-shops are currently based in Maputo, Cabo Delgado, Inhambane, Sofala and Gaza - areas rich in tourism activity and potential, ranging from hotels, tour operators and commercial activities such as craft markets to restaurants and diving centers.

The project aims to reduce the number of days associated with registering and licensing a business in Mozambique from 175 to 13 days (93%) for medium to large sized businesses, and 30 days to just one day (96%) for small businesses.

ICF is also working on a project to modernise and digitalise administrative procedures in the Office of the Administrator and Registrar General (OARG). The project will create a one-stop-shop for all business related procedures, dramatically reducing the time and cost of doing business in Sierra Leone. The OARG, based in Freetown, is responsible for the registration and administration of all activity requiring registry by law, including both land and business registration.

The office provides a valuable source of revenue for the Government and, as such, is critical to the wider economic growth potential of Sierra Leone. The new project aims to streamline and digitalise registry procedures in the OARG; increasing efficiency, reducing delays and lowering the costs of commerce.

The project aims to reduce the time taken to register a business from three weeks to just two hours, and to register a land transaction within two days instead of three weeks. These improvements are crucial to attract both foreign and domestic investors, and particularly the country’s SME sector, who can often be deterred by the high cost and time implications of doing business in the region.

Named ‘top reformer’ in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2010 report, Rwanda is taking huge strides to improve its investment climate. ICF is contributing to the country’s progress by supporting the effort of the Rwanda Investment Climate Project (RICP) which is delivering tangible improvements to commercial justice, business and land registration systems. Prior to ICF intervention, there were no commercial courts in Rwanda, leading to a vast backlog of cases and significant cost and time delays.

With ICF support, four commercial courts are now completed with trained judges and legal libraries fully operational. The backlog of 3,333 cases have been cleared and an additional 9,376 cases received, of which 85% have been resolved. It now takes 210 days to enforce a contract rather than 310.

In a separate component, a one-stop-shop for business registration has been established in Kigali, supported by eight regional offices, reducing the number of days to register a business from 16 to just two and the number of procedures from nine to two. Computerisation is underway to bring further improvements.

As part of the project, the National Land Centre has also been digitalised, reducing the number of days to register property from 371 to 55, and the cost from 10% of a property's value to 0.4%.

ICF is working with the Mauritian government on a second project that will introduce an electronic document management system. This new system will be pivotal in reducing the time for registration and filing of statutory information and improving the quality of data collected. The aim is to reduce:
i) the time it takes to incorporate a company from ½ day to ½ hour
ii)the time it takes to file returns from 14 to 8 days
iii)delivery of certified copies from 2 to 3 days to same day delivery.