Baguio notes growing businesses in the city
Businesses are increasing and expanding in Baguio City per data monitoring of the city government’s Business Permits and Licensing Office (BPLO).
For the first semester of the year, the BPLO noted an increase in the registered number of medium and large enterprises over the past seven years.
As of June 2024, there are 546 medium-scale enterprises registered with the BPLO – an increase by 137 establishments compared to 409 in 2023.
For the large-scale enterprises, there are 96 establishments registered as of June 2024 compared to 77 in 2023.
BPLO head Allan Abayao said most of these establishments are engaged in Wholesale, Retail, Repair of Motor Vehicles and Motorcycles; Accommodation and Food Services; and, Real Estate Activities as the top three industries in the city for the first half of the year.
Small enterprises are also increasing from 1,860 in 2023 to 2,049 this year.
Only the micro enterprises decreased from 22,080 last year to 18,994 as of June 2024 but Abayao is hopeful that this will increase as the BPLO started its routine inspection of business without permits in the barangays to encourage entrepreneurs to register.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) classifies an enterprise based on assets and the number of employees. Micro are those with less than 10 employees, small for 10-99 employees, medium with 100-199 employees, and large if it has 200 or more employees.
The BPLO issued a total of 21,685 business permits as of June 2024 with 1,525 new business registrations and 20,433 as renewal of licenses.
Compared to the total 24,426 business permits issued last year, the BPLO needs to register at least 3,000 more enterprises to surpass its annual performance.
Abayao said that applications for new business permits at the BPLO are processed within 20 minutes for renewal as long as necessary clearances such as fire safety and building clearance for safe occupancy from concerned offices and agencies are submitted.
Businesses without permits are issued Notice of Closure by the BPLO. Over 500 closure orders were already issued as of May 2024. – JM Samidan
