Brunei is making great strides in easing the business processes in the Sultanate, proven with its jump up 29 points to be the 83rd economy out of 183 in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report.

The Sultanate wants to climb further up the Ease of Doing Business scorecharts and, by 2013, plans to join the top 20 economies in the rankings prepared by the World Bank, the Minister of Industry and Primary Resources said in an interview last year in November.

To achieve this goal, the government and the private sector together need to look at systemic weaknesses in rules and regulations governing business and address them, Pehin Orang Kaya Seri Utama Dato Seri Setia Haji Yahya Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Haji Bakar said during a workshop and technical discussion on the ease of doing business in Brunei.

The recent report highlighted improvements in four indicators, including Registering Property and Trading Across Borders.

"Despite these improvements, the overall scores are still relatively low, and Brunei has slipped down five indicators in Starting a Business, Dealing with Construction Permit, Protecting Investors and Resolving Insolvency (Closing a Business)," said Pehin Dato Hj Yahya who chairs Brunei's Ease of Doing Business Steering Committee. These five indicators are crucial in attracting foreign direct investments and the "low scores and deterioration of rankings", he said, are a great concern to him.

To improve Brunei's business environment, it would require improvements across different agencies and after looking at the different sets of regulations and procedures, there is a need for focus, cooperation and coordination, he said. In pursuing Brunei's 2013 target, he said: "This would mean that all the KPIs (key performance indicators) have to be moved, and moved to top positions to bring our rankings up, and it is a task but we have to do it."

Last year, in April, the Municipal Board launched "streamlined processes", for business licensing approvals which cuts down approval time from 10 to five days, depending on the type of business. At the launch, one of the biggest challenge that the Municipal Board said they would be faced with were incomplete submissions of forms, which will cause some businesses to have longer approval time.

According to the procedure, businesses that fall under the "normal business" group will still take up to 10 days to get their Occupational Permit and their Certificate of Fitness, while those that fall under the second group will only take five days to get the same documents.

The Municipal Board's handbook, also published that those that fall under the "normal business" category include restaurants, food court, bakeries, automobile garages, workshops (involving welding and so on), supermarkets, hotels, cinemas, cyber cafes, amusement parks, entertainment centres, tyre stores, massage parlours and aquariums.