STARTING a business in Malaysia will be made a lot easier with the introduction of the Malaysian Corporate Identity Number (MyCoID). The new initiative will cut the time it takes to start up a business here to just three days from eleven now, as per World Bank standards, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said at its launch yesterday.

He said MyCoID is another step forward to help raise Malaysia's ranking in World Bank's annual Doing Business report. The report takes into consideration the ease of doing business in each country. MyCoID refers to the company serial number that is assigned by the Companies Commission of Malaysia (CCM). This will now be the single corporate identity number used by various government agencies for reference, registrations and transactions. It is currently used by five agencies, namely the Inland Revenue Board, Employees Provident Fund, Human Resouces Development Fund, Social Security Organisation and SME Corp Malaysia, but will later expand to include more.

The MyCoID concept effectively phases out and eliminates the various serial numbers assigned by such agencies. "It will increase government efficiency, without adding to its complexity," Najib remarked. He said the government had approved additional funds of RM4.5 million for the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism to set up a MyCoID "gateway" at the CCM that would allow simultaneous registrations with the five government agencies. The gateway is expected to be set up by the end of this year, he said.

"We have achieved one hour for business registration, one day for company registration, (and) now we want to move towards achieving three days to start a business," he said. Najib said he was heartened to see that there was a 16 per cent increase in the number of business registrations last year to 312,581, despite the sluggish global environment. There was only a marginal 0.05 per cent drop in the incorporation of local companies to 41,578, he added, pointing out that this was still "stable".

--NST