The Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology and Innovation plans to integrate its soon-to-be-launched online business registration system for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with a similar feature provided by the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s Cambodia Data Exchange (CamDX) platform.
The plan was unveiled on Tuesday at a technical working group meeting led by industry minister Cham Prasidh.
The working group has run a pilot registration test for the ministry’s MISTI Key Single Portal (MISTI KSP) which proved 90 per cent successful in transferring data from CamDX, Prasidh noted.
“I highly appreciate the technical team’s efforts over the past several months, which have yielded satisfactory results and have helped make headway in the work of the ministry,” he said, adding that MISTI KSP aims to minimise paperwork burdens, save time and trim informal costs.
“I would like to recommend the further review of technical aspects, work efficiency, spelling issues in both the Khmer and English versions, and suggest ramping up data security to overcome the shortcomings before the system’s official launch,” Prasidh said.
Chhea Layhy, the director of the industry ministry’s General Department of Small and Medium Enterprises and Handicraft, told The Post that following the test’s success, the working group will list 200 more SMEs under the pilot registration programme to ensure that the MISTI KSP system runs smoothly.
“We plan to integrate the online business registration system with that of the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s this November, meaning that SMEs could register their businesses with either one,” he said, noting that MISTI KSP comes in response to the rapid surge in SMEs and is designed to streamline their registration processes.
“In the first phase of the programme, we will only register SMEs, with the next steps set to take into account larger industries.
“Once the business registration system is set in motion, we are counting on high levels of support from SMEs,” Layhy said.
Cambodia Chamber of Commerce vice-president Lim Heng said MISTI KSP is slated to reinforce the industry ministry’s accuracy and transparency, and enhance its efficiency.
“We support it. The [industry] ministry setting up such an online business registration system is wonderful news and is exactly what the private sector wants. It will also cut down on red tape and the bureaucratic hassles involved in registration,” he said.
The Cambodia Inter-censal Economic Survey 2014 shows there were 513,759 enterprises in the Kingdom that year, of which 97.6 per cent were micro-enterprises and 2.2 per cent SMEs.
Women-owned 26 per cent of SMEs and 62 per cent of micro-enterprises.
