ILOILO City – The renewal of business permits will be until Jan. 20 only.
City hall will be open on weekends – Saturday and Sunday – to accommodate applicants.
According to Business Permits and Licensing Office (BPLO) head Norman Tabud, the “one-stop shop” for business permit renewal is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.
These weekends are the following:
* Jan. 4 – Saturday
* Jan. 5 – Sunday
* Jan. 11 – Saturday
* Jan. 12 – Sunday
* Jan. 18 – Saturday
* Jan. 19 – Sunday
The BPLO has improved its processes, said Tabud. The business permit together with fire safety inspection certificate, sanitary permit and tourism permit are issued all at once.
“Upon release sang business permit, i-release man ining other permits and licenses unlike before when ang releasing sang sanitary and tourism permit after na sang pag-release sang business permit. After nila kuha business permit, makadto pa sila sa tourism office to apply for a tourism license, same man sa City Health for sanitary permit,” Tabud said.
Last year, the BPLO issued permits to a total of 16,391 businesses.
This year, it projects to release an additional 2,000 permits.
Tabud said most of the businesses here are in retail and wholesale and tourism-related such as food and accommodation.
“For mobile canteen/food truck business, kinahanglan naton sang ordinance para ma-regulate sila,” said Tabud.
He also acknowledged the existence of online businesses. But while some apply for business permit, others do not, he lamented.
“One of the challenges is locating where they are,” said Tabud.
Tabud was recently criticized by Mayor Jerry Treñas for complaining that the BPLO did not have enough logistics to check if some businesses were operating without permits.
“Nag-create na ko gani task force para mabuligan sya,” stressed the mayor.
BPLO’s 2018 data showed that the business sector here was predominantly made up of microenterprises – around 90 percent of which had asset size of not more than P3 million.
The most prevalent type of businesses in the city were in wholesale trade and merchandising, followed by the food and beverage and hospitality sectors, with real estate and leasing coming in fourth.
It recently came to Treñas’ attention that a septic tank desludging company has long been operating without a business permit.
“If he (Tabud) cannot do it, he can resign,” said Treñas./PN
