• The Bogota Chamber of Commerce has been developing actions to simplify procedures for the creation and operation of companies in Bogota and Cundinamarca, in order to improve the competitiveness of the productive sector.

The CCB provides the productive sector of Bogota and Cundinamarca with information on business procedures as part of the Observatory of the Bogota Cundinamarca Region where, through Power BI boards and informative videos, entrepreneurs can find comprehensive and unified information on procedures for 9 municipalities in Cundinamarca and for 5 economic sectors in Bogota.

In the query boards, entrepreneurs will be able to make filtered searches by municipality and in the case of Bogota, by economic activity, accessing detailed information on each procedure with data such as duration of the procedure, entities involved, contact numbers, points of attention, step by step to complete the procedure from start to finish, required documentation, costs and payment channels, regulations applied to the procedure and links to consult the same.

Creating a formal company involves 7 procedures and 10 days, 1 procedure in the CCB in 4 hours and 6 more before different entities that take 9 days. Additionally, in order for the company to start operations, other transversal procedures are required and some sectors such as industry, health and environment require specific procedures for each sector.

For this reason, the Bogota Chamber of Commerce is working on initiatives for the elimination of normative and regulatory barriers that seek to simplify the formalities and procedures to create and start up a company.

Within the framework of this work and with the purpose of simplifying procedures for the creation of companies, harmonizing processes and unifying information, the Bogota Chamber of Commerce has promoted the incorporation of municipalities in the One-Stop Business Window (VUE), achieving the signing of 13 agreements for its implementation with Cajicá and Sopó (2020); Zipaquirá, Chía, Tocancipá, Fusagasugá, Tenjo, Cota, Gachancipá, Cogua, Nemocón, Villapinzón, Sesquilé (2021).

As a complement to this work and with the support of territorial entities, unions and entrepreneurs, during 2021 the CCB developed the Mapping and Characterization of procedures for the creation and operation of companies in 9 municipalities within its jurisdiction: Cajicá, Cota, Chía, Fusagasugá, La Calera, Sopó, Tenjo, Tocancipá and Zipaquirá.

These mappings made it possible to identify the procedures that present the greatest difficulties for businessmen, highlighting procedures such as Urban Development Licenses, Visual Outdoor Advertising, Land Use Concept and Sanitary Concept. In 2022 the CCB, with public and private partners in the region, is managing work plans with actions in the short and medium term to facilitate and simplify the procedures mapped and prioritized last year in these municipalities.

Parallel to the municipal work, the CCB identified procedures in some economic sectors in Bogotá, mapping and characterizing procedures in 5 economic activities in the city: restaurants, neighborhood stores, hardware stores, clothing manufacturing and drugstores.

The level of information gathered in these mappings of procedures now provides a repository of detailed step-by-step information, costs, regulations, times, channels and requirements so that businessmen can consult the Observatory of the Bogota - Cundinamarca Region for operating procedures, depending on their territory and/or sector.

In order to expand the coverage of this exercise, the CCB is currently mapping 3 new municipalities: Cogua, Gachancipá and Ubaté, where we will also design action plans for the simplification of business procedures.