Business registration is crucial for ensuring accountable, transparent and viable business environments. By bringing businesses into the formal economy, governments are able to provide more strategic and targeted policies for businesses and consumers. The objective of this working paper is to look at the importance of business registration for governments, businesses and citizens. It explores the this issue through a series of case studies that support good practices in customer orientation and joined-up government. Each of the different case studies fall under a pillar that aims to support countries in the development of their business registration systems.
The paper also aims to provide policy directions for countries in Southeast Asia when developing modern business registration systems and provides some background for the development of ASEAN’s regional business registration principles.
