Last month, Julien Bornon from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) presented the Global Enterprise Registration (GER) system to Global Entrepreneurship Week hosts from 158 countries during the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Milan, Italy. Hosts were encouraged to spread word of the tool to entrepreneurs in their communities, helping expand its usage in countries around the world.
This month, GER took center stage again when Ann Low, deputy director of the Office of investment at the US Department of State presented it at the 5th Annual Investment Meeting in Dubai, UAE.
GER provides direct access to official business registration websites worldwide and assessments of their user-friendliness. This is a critical tool for the ecosystem because easier business registration saves entrepreneurs time and creates more taxpayers to finance sustainable development. GER is a joint initiative by UNCTAD, the Global Entrepreneurship Network and the US Department of State.
As Low is quoted as saying in a recent article by Capital Finance International, “In many developing countries, over 50 percent of economic activity is conducted by unregistered businesses. This means that those businesses don’t have bank accounts, so can’t take out loans to grow, and don’t have access to health or social insurance. An illness can cause a business to fail. By making registration easier, businesses quickly get the necessary documentation to apply for bank loans and access to social services.”
Added Low, “ger.co aims to be the first stop for business registration anywhere in the world. The site uses a simple green dot rating system to alert an entrepreneur to the complexity of the business registration process in different countries. This information saves the entrepreneur time since he knows what to expect. GER also reduces corruption by encouraging governments to put their processes online, increasing transparency and predictability.”
Facilitating business registration globally stimulates entrepreneurship, saves entrepreneurs time and money, reduces corruption, increases the size of the formal sector, and generates more tax revenues to finance sustainable development. Presenting links to all the world’s online business registration sites in one location helps governments identify best practices and simplify procedures. This benefits entrepreneurs and investors everywhere.
For more information on GER, visit the GER brochure.