Rep. TJ Manglona, center, with Reps. Vicente Camacho, left, and Roy Ada.
MORE work is needed on House Bill 23-117, which proposes to implement a digital program to streamline business licensing in the CNMI, according to Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council Chair Marian DLG Tudela.
Authored by Rep. Thomas John Manglona, H.B. 23-117 aims to address the “cumbersome, time-consuming and inefficient” process of obtaining business licenses and permits, which has “hindered economic growth” in the Commonwealth.
The bill cited numerous studies that highlighted the benefits of electronic licensing management systems such as the Online Single Submission System of the Indonesian government.
The bill, which is now with the House Committee on Commerce and Tourism, would require the Department of Commerce to develop and manage a “comprehensive digital program” in collaboration with the Department of Finance, the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality and other relevant regulatory agencies.
In her letter to the committee chair, Rep. Julie Ogo, Tudela said H.B. 23-117 “seems to anchor reliance on a digitized platform out of Indonesia as ‘numerous studies’ without making available links to enable the reader to look further into such ‘studies’ regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of Indonesia’s online single submission approach.”
Tudela said “more work should be done” on H.B. 23-117. Lawmakers should “not usher a new legislative mandate for the implementation of a digital program business licensing permit without first performing basic due diligence in good faith on the current status of business licensing at Revenue and Taxation, in relation to Treasury and Finance, or the Registrar of Corporation at Commerce, no less the local Zoning on Saipan,” Tudela added.
She noted that Public Law 12-76, enacted 20 years ago, created a Business License Application Task Force to formulate a plan for a one-stop business license center. Also, she said, the Division of Revenue and Taxation has launched an agency-centric website that enables online access to digitized tax forms and other business licensing documents, available 24/7.
However, she said, the CNMI central government “has yet to install an interactive online platform that is 24/7. This, if fully implemented, would enable online interactive platform on a much larger scale that should also be business-friendly in tracking payment processing of government procurement transactions with private vendors, no less government users.”
She said, “The full panoply of MUNIS’ interactive digitized functions has not yet been fully realized and appears headed to being downgraded or access limited to mere query and certain interactive digitized features for internal and undisclosed reasons.”
Tudela is urging the Legislature to look into this matter “in order to better understand the rationale behind what appears as utility restricted or downgrade on the use of MUNIS’ powerful interactive digitized functions, that when fully functional, could potentially be an example of an interactive digitized platform, 24/7.”
Instead of adding a new layer of bureaucracy, she said “it is important to conduct a needs assessment on the present system as it has operated to date, and work in supporting the process that is already working and works, a process that simply requires resource support by the Legislature in order to enable both the business license application center to work better.”
