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Business Registration Speeds Up in Bosnia and Herzegovina
FrontLines - December-January 2009-10
By Virginija Morgan
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and
Herzegovina—The road from
an idea to an actual business in
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)
is no longer winding and uncertain.
Under a new rapid registration
process, businesses can
enter the market in a single day.
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Clothing store owner
Ranka Marinkovic is a
new entrepreneur in
Mrkonjic Grad, Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
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“I was surprised by how
quickly the registration process
went,” said Ranka Markovic,
an entrepreneur who opened
a clothing store in Mrkonjic
Grad, a town in northern BiH.
“In my previous experience
working for another business,
it took 15 days for just one part
of the business registration process
to be completed. This time
it took me only one day.”
Small- and medium-sized
enterprises are at the core of
economic activity throughout
Eastern Europe. Previously,
entering the market for unincorporated
businesses in BiH
was extremely complicated
and discouraging to future
entrepreneurs.
USAID’s Streamlining
Permits and Inspections
Regimes Activity (SPIRA)
helped to replace outdated procedures
and develop a strategy
that serves both the business
community and the public.
“We realized that the registration
process at the municipal
level was unnecessarily complex,
restricting market growth,”
said David Lieberman, the
supervisory private enterprise
officer for USAID’s office in
BiH. “Business associations and
administrative institutions were
fully aware that the situation
was blocking development of
the domestic market and worsening
BiH’s competitiveness
with other countries. SPIRA
has helped eliminate obstacles
and create conditions for faster
growth of this sector.”
A small number of municipalities
were the first to implement
the single-day registration
process for unincorporated
businesses. One year later, the
experiment is becoming common
practice, with more than
one-quarter of the country’s
municipalities poised to implement
it.
“Registration of unincorporated
businesses in a single
day is a win-win situation. An
entrepreneur does not waste his/
her precious time and completes
everything in one place. The
local administration operates
more efficiently and there is
some evidence that the grey
economy is being reduced,”
said Slobodan Marković, director
of the Small and Medium
Enterprises Development
Agency in BiH’s Republika
Srpska.
Under the project, USAID
helped develop the automated
Electronic Document
Management and Workflow
System (EDMWS) in cooperation
with local institutions.
The system provides an
immediate, automated information
exchange between
municipal representatives and
utility companies involved in the
construction permit process. The
time required to obtain urban
permits has decreased from
between 270 and 450 days to
less than 60 days.
The system was tested in
two cities—Banja Luka and
Tuzla—in the beginning of
2009. It has since expanded to
other municipalities across BiH.
“We in the district are still
like a baby taking its first steps
in the rush of the contemporary
IT world,” said Dragan Pajić,
mayor of Brčko District, after the
launch of EDMWS. “This project
will significantly contribute
to the strengthening of overall IT
operations of the district’s government
and implementation.”
“It’s a totally different line of
work to be an entrepreneur. All
of those exceptional inventions
[under the SPIRA project] have allowed us to focus on the business and our future, rather than chasing down paper,” said new entrepreneur Ranka Marinkovic.
★
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by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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