The following is an excerpt from the 2023 GEN Impact Report, released at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in September 2023. Read the full report here.
Global Enterprise Registration (GER), an initiative led by the Global Entrepreneurship Network and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), helps governments simplify and automate administrative steps entrepreneurs need to take when starting or scaling new businesses, allowing them to spend less time on paperwork and more time on running their companies.
Driving the Digitalization of Business Services
Simple and transparent government procedures help businesses formalize and grow more quickly, creating jobs, supporting underserved communities and helping governments build sustainable economies. Key to the approach of the GER program is building the capacity of government staff to see procedures from the entrepreneur's perspective, simplify them and place them online.
GER delivers five services by request from national, provincial and municipal authorities through:
-
Online Single Windows: Automating the business registration process completely online, making the procedure more accessible to both busy founders and those segments of an economy intimidated by government procedures – especially the poor, women, youth and rural populations. This solution results in more companies registered and lower costs for governments.
-
Step-by-Step Information Portals: Making complex administrative procedures understandable to entrepreneurs and easier for governments to review and simplify processes, cutting red tape and costs for users and taxpayers.
-
Digital Residency for Foreign Investors: Digitizing regulatory compliance is a critical step toward offering digital residency which helps governments promote foreign investment by allowing investors to register companies from abroad.
-
Online Fiscal Services: Providing an online tax history helps businesses with conducting their tax calculations and payment services online and both entrepreneurs and governments determine which companies qualify for payments or subsidies.
-
Digital Government Documents: Allows governments to issue verifiable documents in a digital format that can be securely stored by business owners on a mobile phone and protected by biometric technology.
GER Work in Iraq Comes to Successful Conclusion
Prior to 2020, registering a business in Baghdad was a cumbersome task with loopholes that opened the doors to corruption. The process required an entrepreneur to take 35 separate steps, make multiple in-person visits to various government offices, and pay a variety of fees at different times to different entities. Thanks to collaborative efforts by GEN, UNCTAD, and the governments of Iraq and the United States, this process was overhauled through a project that was declared a massive success upon its completion in 2023 by all involved parties.
Over a six-year contract, GEN and UNCTAD worked directly with Iraqi government officials to review existing procedures, create photo documentation of each step in the business registration process, identify and eliminate unnecessary, duplicate or problematic steps, and create and implement a “single-window” system – business.mot.gov.iq – that simplified the business registration process and reduced opportunities for corruption. The system replaced the multi-step, multi-payment process with an online portal that allows founders to create businesses entirely online, with no in-person visits to government offices and just a few clicks – or five easy steps – from a web browser.
With this system, founders can register businesses with five mandatory registries using one single form, one set of documents and one single payment. It reserves the business name with the Chamber of Commerce of Baghdad and the Iraqi Federation of Chambers of Commerce; adds it with the Company Registry, and provides the entrepreneur with a tax and social security number.
As a result, Iraq is now among the top-rated countries globally for ease of business registration, alongside Australia, Denmark, Estonia, Kenya, Oman and Sweden. It scores 10/10 across all dimensions of the Global Entrepreneurship Registration ranking of online business registration services.
Single Window Shows Early Results for Iraqi Businesses
Within its first year of operation, 2,485 businesses opened using the window. The majority of individuals opening businesses are from Iraq (95%), however the system has also enhanced the ease at which foreign entrepreneurs are opening companies in the country. A portion of new business registrations have come from Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.
The single window is a major asset for women entrepreneurs because of the time and cost-saving advantages. While only seven per cent of those opening businesses are women, more women and young people like 29-year-old Saja al-Bayati, are starting companies.
“I read all the details about the one single window portal, submitted all my papers, and paid the registration fees online by card payment without needing a lawyer,” she said. “It was the first government e-service I ever experienced and it was great.”
Another entrepreneur, Sanaa Abdel Rahim Shakeel, who opened her trading business seamlessly on the platform said: “This improves and raises a society's culture and attitude towards these practices, creating momentum and facilitating transactions in government institutions, which is a positive thing. As women in society, we need the government's support to operate at optimum.”
Iraqi Government Officials Provided with Training + Resources to Continue Automation
Through this work, the Iraqi government and its agencies have been empowered by tools that reveal the complexity of procedures, as well as a methodology to simplify them without changing rules or laws. They also now have the ability to design user-centric services without the need for IT experts. In response, the Iraq Council of Ministers (COMSEC), reported it wants to automate over 50 services and include all 14 Iraqi provinces in the single window.
“Improving the business environment in Iraq is our top priority,” said Mohammed Honoun, Iraqi deputy minister of trade. “Automation of government sectors is a critical part of that process.”
By June 2023, the project was successfully built and tested and GEN handed over the future management of the single window to Iraqi government officials.
Read the full 2023 GEN Impact Report here.