| Azlan Othman |
PORT processing procedures must not be more than two hours to facilitate trading across borders.
This was highlighted by Pehin Datu Singamanteri Colonel (Rtd) Dato Seri Setia (Dr) Awang Haji Mohammad Yasmin bin Haji Umar, Minister of Energy and Industry at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), during an interview with the media concerning Brunei Darussalam’s latest ranking in the World Banks’ Doing Business 2017 report released on October 26.
“The port process procedures must not be more than two hours. Currently we are at 47 hours which means the process in inefficient. We see the tasks that we need to do more and we are not doing well on this. We want to put all our efforts to achieve this,” said the minister.
Awangku Abdul Aziz bin Pengiran Ali Hassan, Head of Secretariat for Ease of Doing Business (EODB) at the PMO, said that only 34 per cent of full-container loads and 10 per cent of loose-cargo loads are cleared from the Muara Port within the 32-hour target when he commented on border compliance. He pointed out that the target for March 2017 is to reduce the time to under 32 hours.
The World Bank named Brunei Darussalam as the most improved economy in the world for the second year running, in terms of making doing business in the Sultanate easier.
The report, which measures the efficiency and regulation of domestic businesses, records Brunei Darussalam as jumping a significant 25 places to rank 72 out of 190 economies worldwide, scoring improvements across eight out of 10 indicators and increasing its ‘Distance to Frontier’ score to 65.51 out of 100, indicating a narrowing gap between Brunei and the top performing economy.
The indicators that improved in rankings include ‘Getting Electricity’, ‘Getting Credit’, ‘Protecting Minority Investors’, ‘Paying Taxes’, ‘Enforcing Contracts’, ‘Resolving Insolvency’, ‘Registering Property’ and ‘Trading Across Borders’.
“We are focussing to increase the Distance to Frontier score where we improved tremendously to 65.51 out of 100 in the 2017 World Bank report from a score of 60.26 last year (2016),” said Awangku Abdul Aziz.
“This is over a four-point increase compared to the year before, which is unheard off,” said the minister.
Two indicators have fallen, namely ‘Starting a Business’ which dropped from 74th in 2016 to 85th in 2017) and ‘Dealing with Construction Permits’ which saw a drop from 33th to 37th.
One highlight of the report is the element of gender, where the drop in ranking was due to an additional procedure whereby a woman has to get consent from her husband to set a business.
“This is not true and this applies not only to Brunei Darussalam but also to other Islamic countries globally. We will have a discussion with the World Bank to rectify this misconception,” said Awangku Abdul Aziz when he commented on the drop in ranking. “This is not the case and should not be reflected in the report as women can do business from their homes.”
Awangku Abdul Aziz said that in order to reach the target of being in the top 20, government agencies and the private sector need to maintain focus and drive more progress with pace and urgency.
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