business

Entrepreneurs take to government web site

Online business registration at the government web site has attracted double the applicants that the traditional method did.

Elysee Fernandez/MI DIARIO

business savvy: Gaspar Tarté of the Secretaría de Innovación Gubernamental, said newly registered businesses will invest $741.9 million and create 48,093 jobs.1054785

In the year since the government launched panamaemprende.gob.pa, a web site aimed at streamlining the process of starting a business, some 21,307 companies have opened in Panama via the Internet, according to the Secretaría de Innovación Gubernamental.

That figure is nearly double the number of businesses that registered under the traditional manual system between July 2006 and July 2007, reported the Ministerio de Comercio e Industrias (Mici).

“With everything we’ve done to increase the facilities available for doing business at PanamaEmprende, I’m convinced that Panama is among the first places in the world [listed] in the World Bank’s “Doing Business 2008” index said Secretaría director Gaspar Tarté.

A law passed January 11, 2007 made it possible for both nationals and foreigners to open businesses on the site in about 30 minutes. A potential business owner in Panama need only to fill out a digital form and sign an sworn statement online, bypassing the customary pilgrimage to more than five public offices to fill out volumes of applications.

“I didn’t have any problems with the system and the process turned out to be fast and cheap,” commented Anamin Frisneda, an entrepreneur who will open a new business, Café Suzette, on Via Argentina in August.

In the past, said Frisneda, the price of a liquor permit could cost up to $20,000. “Now the interim permit is also available online and I only had to make a single payment of $650.”

Of the total companies that registered online with PanamaEmprende during the last year, 44 percent are devoted to wholesale trade; 41 percent are involved in retail trade; 10 percent perform industrial activities, and the remainder fall into the “non-profit” and “other” categories.