The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been cited by Finance Secretary Ralph G. Recto for heeding the administration’s call for digitalization, as he urged public leaders to follow suit to improve the ease of doing business and ensure prompt delivery of services to the people.
In a speech delivered on his behalf during the Development Academy of the Philippines’ Leadership Conference on February 1, Secretary Recto emphasized President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr.’s marching orders under the Bagong Pilipinas brand of governance for government offices to rapidly integrate digital technologies across the bureaucracy to enhance the ease of doing business, streamline processes, expedite responses, and promptly deliver public services.
Secretary Recto noted the substantial progress made by the Department of Finance in embracing digitalization, including the digitalization program of the SEC that has led to a notable increase in the number of registered corporations in the country.
“These examples only represent a fraction of the ongoing digital transformation initiatives within the public sector. The Marcos, Jr. administration is strongly committed to integrating such innovations into the entire government framework to help bring public services closer to the people,” Secretary Recto said.
In 2023, the SEC posted a record high in terms of company registrations, seeing a total of 49,473 new companies at the end of the year, a 15.3% increase from the previous year.
The SEC attributes the record-breaking figure to the success of its digital initiatives, starting with the launch of eSPARC in April 2021 and its subsystem, the One Day Submission and Electronic Registration of Companies (OneSEC) in September 2021.
The launch of eSPARC reduced the time needed to register a company from 34 to three days. Applicants also have the option to register through OneSEC, a pass-through system with uses pre-filled application forms, under which the Commission registered a record processing time of one minute and 14 seconds from the start of the application to the receipt of a digital certificate of incorporation.
The success of eSPARC has led to the Philippines being recognized as having one of the best company registration systems in the world by the Corporate Registers Forum, an international body of corporate registries, during a conference in Malta in October.
In addition, the SEC launched the Electronic Filing and Submission Tool (eFAST) in 2021, for the submission of digital copies of reportorial requirements, such as annual financial statements and general information sheets.
The Commission also launched the Electronic System for Payments to the SEC (eSPAYSEC), where the public can choose from over 90,000 online and offline payment channels.
In 2023, President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. himself launched the Commission’s new advanced systems for access to corporate information and other services, namely: Electronic SEC Universal Registration Environment (eSECURE), SEC CheckApp 2.0, Electronic SEC Education, Analysis, Research Computing Hub (eSEARCH), SEC API Marketplace, and the Electronic Registration Application for Market Participants (eRAMP).
“The SEC prides itself with being one of the first-movers in digitalizing services in the government, which has allowed us to institute game-changing reforms for the corporate sector,” SEC Chairperson Emilio B. Aquino said. “We are ready to collaborate with our colleagues in the public sector toward further digitalization, in support of our President’s call for Bagong Pilipinas.”
