Industry and Commerce minister chairs meeting

Manama, Aug. 29 (BNA): Industry and Commerce Minister Zayed bin Rashid Al Zayani has chaired the project coordination meeting of developing Business Licensing Integrated System (BLIS) to discuss the developments of the project related to Public Target. The meeting was attended by representatives of governmental ministries and entities. The minister underscored the government’s keenness on improving the governmental work so as to meet the aspirations of citizens and commercial field’s beneficiaries, which contributes to the promotion and development of the national economy’s role and attracts investments. He highlighted the outstanding of role of eGovernment Authority (eGA) at developing and implementing BLIS, he also thanked all ministries and state agencies for their cooperation to successfully activate it. BLIS aims to reduce the time required in obtaining commercial registrations and every business-associated license; reducing the need to visit the Investors Centre or other governmental organizations. It will automatically communicate with applicants via emails or SMS text messaging to inform them of the license’s issuance stages and provide them with all necessary information 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The system will also include all the conditions, procedures, laws and regulations related to acquiring business licenses; creating an integrated database that contains all the information related to commercial registration and licensing. This includes a summary of the business environment in the Kingdom of Bahrain, trade name reservation process, different legal forms of entities and registration requirements, as well as an overview of the corporate governance. BLIS will also provide services related to business activities such as company name, change of address, addition or deletion of a partner, along with the ability to amend authorized signatories. It saves the beneficiaries’ time and effort by eliminating the need to apply more than once, as well as the fees payment that can be accomplished in one step for all licenses to the entities related and giving related authorities fixed time to respond to applications.