RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: The Sindh government appears optimistic to complete the World Bank (WB) supported ‘100 Day Reforms Plan’ for ease of doing business by February 2018. The WB will spend US $1 million per year on this project in Pakistan.

Declaring the improvement in the investment climate as national emergency, Chairperson Sindh Board of Investment (SBI) Naheed Memon at a press briefing held at a local hotel, said that the Sindh government has planned to automate business registration via a portal which would link all provincial and central databases and authorities for starting a business.

The portal will integrate all departmental procedures online to facilitate entrepreneurs in getting required provincial registrations from a single place in real time. This facility will be launched as a pilot project in key government departments and the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry as well, she said.

The relevant provincial agencies are reforming regulations related to construction permits and these reforms include de-notification of environmental approval for low-impact project, simplification of procedure and reduction in timeline for water connection at KWSB and reduction in number of procedures at SBCA for obtaining a building permit. She said that some reforms were already implemented such as the Land Administration & Revenue Management Information System (LARMIS) at Board of Revenue. The Sindh LARMIS was the first system in the country to automate the process of property registration.

The automation of property registration has begun as all current registrations are scanned, indexed and made available online for online title search through Digital Scanning Unit. The time for execution and registration of deed is now less than 100 days. However, this procedure took more than 200 days in past.

Similarly, the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board (KWSB) has also reduced the prerequisites for a new water connection application. The checklist for a new connection now requires only four items instead of eight items previously. Moreover, the time taken for new connection will be reduced to 21 days from 61 days.

Amjad Bashir, Senior Economist–Trade and Competitiveness South Asia, World Bank while giving electronic presentation said that six of eight economies in South Asia implemented 20 reforms in the past year and India with eight reforms was one of top ten improvers worldwide this year, entering top 100 economies globally. However, Pakistan has implemented four business regulatory reforms including starting a business, property registration, minority investors and cross-border trade that caused decline in its ranking in Ease of Doing Business (EODB) from 144 in 2017 to 147 in 2018.

He said that the EODB Index produced annually by the World Bank Group (WBG), which measured the quality and efficiency of business regulation and its enforcement in selected cities across 190 economies including Karachi and Lahore in Pakistan and added that they proposed the SBI to ensure binding services standards in its reforms to increase transparency.