The Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) is finalizing a memorandum circular (MC) that will reduce to less than a month from nine months the processing time to secure permits in building shared towers in the country.
This was the outcome of an inter-agency meeting on the National Effort for the Harmonization of Efficient Measures (NEHEMIA) program conducted by ARTA with the telecommunication sector recently.
During the meeting, the participants discussed the updates and held a working session for the finalization of the joint MC titled “Prescribing the streamlined guidelines for the issuance of permits, licenses and certificates for the construction of shared passive telecommunications tower Infrastructures (PTTIs).”
The circular also aims to reduce the requirements for securing permits for common towers.
The common towers and interconnectivity sector is among the sectors targeted for the first phase of the NEHEMIA program along with the housing, food and pharmaceutical, logistics and energy sectors.
The Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) targets to reduce by 50 percent the redundant permitting requirements in building a common tower to help speed up the network buildout that would improve the coverage and quality of telecom services in the country.
The planned MC is also in compliance with recently issued Department Circular No. 8 or the shared PTTIs policy which mandated the barangays, local government units, national government agencies and homeowners associations to follow the mandated maximum time period for the issuance of necessary permits, clearances, and certifications as provided under Section 15 of Republic Act 9485, otherwise known as the “Ease of Doing Business Act of 2018”.
Telecom firms said it takes an average of 8 months to build a single cell site tower as they need to secure an average of 25 permits adding up the time to acquire the right-of-way.
The DICT will streamline the process to achieve its target to increase the number of towers in the country from 18,000 to 50,000 in the next five to 10 years.
NEHEMIA is the flagship program of ARTA which is a sectoral-based streamlining effort directed towards reducing the time, cost, requirements, and procedures in sectors of economic and social significance.
