The Anti-Red Tape Act in The Philippines

The Anti-Red Tape Act
in the Philippines
Written by Lisa Schaefer Asia & OceaniaJustice
Princeton UniversityThis analysis is based in part on research conducted by Maya Gainer in

November 2014 by Innovations for Succesful Societies. The research was based on interviews
conducted in Manila, the Philippines.
Before 2007, citizens of the Philippines had to complete 11 individual

governmental procedures and wait for at least 48 days before they were
allowed to conduct official commercial activities. As well as causing long
delays, this sort of governmental red tape created a severe problem with
corruption: citizens who wanted to speed up the process had recourse to
bribing government officials. In 2007, the Philippines government adopted
the Anti-Red Tape Act to combat corrupt behaviour and improve its
frontline public service offering to its citizens.
The challenge
In the 2000s, citizens in the Philippines have faced significant difficulties in receiving
prompt and efficient service from government departments and agencies. For example, in order
to start a business Filipinos had to complete 11 individual procedures and wait for at least 48
days for governmental approval. This excluded the application for a business permit at the local
mayor’s office and waiting for designated print shops to issue receipts, which added even more
time. As a result, in its Doing Business 2007 report the World Bank ranked the Philippines 126th
out of 175 countries for its "ease of doing business".[1] These long waiting times and
complicated bureaucratic procedures were common to all the ministries that provided services to
citizens, from supplying business permits to issuing driving licences.
Given these complex procedures, many citizens sought illegal, corrupt ways to speed up the
process. Public servants were used to bribes, and they routinely demanded them: “many of the
people who used frontline services – and the officials who delivered them – considered bribery
and inefficiency routine”.[2] It was common to hire so-called "fixers", who made special
arrangements to speed up transactions in exchange for a fee. This, in turn, meant that the
government was unable to collect adequate revenue for the provision of its services, while
citizens became increasingly disillusioned with the amount of red tape they encountered.
The initiative
In June 2007, the Filipino government tried to tackle this problem through the Anti-Red Tape
Act (ARTA). Its overall intention was to increase transparency and promote honesty and
responsibility in government service delivery. The Act included simplifying measures to reduce
red tape in service transactions, and it established a formal corruption prevention tool for service
provision.
ARTA was the first legislation in the Philippines to establish a minimum standard in accessing
frontline government services, including at its core a “maximum processing period of five days
for simple transactions and ten days for complex transactions. Signatories are also mandated to
be limited to a maximum of five.”[3]
In 2008, the government published the Implementing and Regulation Rules (IRR), which
clarified and interpreted the law, and the Civil Service Commission (CSC) launched the citizen
charter programme as the flagship initiative to implement ARTA. The citizen charter was a
document that “communicates, in simple terms, information on the services provided by the
government to its citizens. It describes the step-by-step procedure for availing a particular
service, and the guaranteed performance level that they may expect for that service.”[4] These
documents had to include the amount of fees to be paid, the maximum waiting time, and the
officer responsible for each step of the process.
In 2010, the CSC published the first of a number of report card surveys to “obtain feedback on
existence and effectiveness of, as well as compliance with the Citizen’s Charter, and how the
office or agency is performing insofar as frontline services are concerned”. Based on these
surveys, the government issues the “Citizen’s Satisfaction Center Seal of Excellence” to those
agencies that have received no ARTA-related complaints and achieved excellent ratings in their
report card survey.
The public impact

In the 2017 World Bank ranking for the ‘ease of doing business’, the Philippines was ranked
99th out of 190, a tangible improvement over the intervening decade (see The Challenge above).
Although the number of procedures involved in applying for and receiving a business permit had
increased from 11 to 16, the waiting time had been reduced from 48 days in 2007 to 28 days in
2017.[5]
For example, the CSC's report card survey measuring compliance and public satisfaction with
governmental services showed that even between 2012 and 2013 the offices surveyed had
improved their service offering substantially. “Offices which obtained an Excellent rating
increased, from 8 percent in 2012 (50 service offices out of 599 surveyed) to 18 percent in 2013
(168 service offices out of 929 surveyed). The percentage of offices that failed decreased, from
25 percent in 2012 (150 service offices out of 599 surveyed) to 7 percent in 2013 (67 service
offices out of 929 surveyed).”[6] In 2015, the Excellence rating of offices had increased to 31.7
percent.
(https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/anti-red-tape-act-philippines/)

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The Anti-Red Tape Act

Princeton UniversityThis analysis is based in part on research conducted by Maya Gainer in

Before 2007, citizens of the Philippines had to complete 11 individual

The public impact

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