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Victoria Mindova

Greece had to reach the brink of bankruptcy to trigger the state machine to bring results. A single business register has been created after ten years in torment, which will contain detailed information about the various companies in the country. Of course, there will be information only about newly registered companies for now, because the data on existing enterprises are scattered in 59 different chambers, 52 offices to serve the citizens and several other institutions.

The establishment and the operation of the Single Business Register fired with enthusiasm the government officials from Directorate General for Trade at the Ministry of Regional Development like a child enjoys an ice-cream  in the hot summer. According to the Secretary General for Trade Stefanos Komninos, the innovation in public administration will help Greece climb up the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking by whole 93 positions after in 2010 it was ranked 147^th out of the 185^th countries on the criteria for starting a business. According to government representatives, the register will reduce the time for opening a company from 19 days to 1 day and the costs of the future businessmen by about 33%.

In presenting the new institution, which will register all births in the country superlatives such as "great success", "new age" and "creating a miracle" were heard. All these definitions were given to the commercial register, which allows local citizens and foreigners to open their company in Greece in a day. The problem that government representatives recognized with difficulty was that even some kind of company is created, it can not operate because a whole bunch of permissions are still required before it actually becomes operational.

"If I want to open a bakery I can register in a day with the new system but then it would take months to obtain the permissions from the fire service, the planning organization, the Hygiene and Epidemiological Inspectorate, the archaeological supervisory body and a number of other institutions," said particularly for GRReporter a Greek citizen who commented on the news.
 
This did not prevent the happy officials to exchange congratulations for the successful work for a half an hour during the press conference held to present the new system to journalists. "A new era in the management of commercial data in the country is starting and it needs to be successful," said Michalis Sfakianakis - the chief supervisor of the new single business register in Greece. The president of the Federation of Greek Chambers George Kasimatis defined today as the most important day for Greece in national and business terms.  
 
In practice, from the 4^th of April 2011 all those willing to open their company in Greece should go to the relevant chamber (commercial, industrial, manufacturing, etc.) by region with their ID card or a certificate of residence and right to work if they are foreigners. Furthermore, they must present a document proving that they do not owe taxes or social contributions to the state as well as a lease or a deed of ownership of the property which will house the relevant business. The procedure will take about half an hour and then the citizens will be proud owners of a company.

Representatives of the Ministry of Regional Development acknowledged in an informal conversation with GRReporter that there is still much to be done to eliminate the deep-rooted obstacles to doing business. They did not deny that the new changes will give real results when the single system includes the facilitation of obtaining permits from the state institutions. However, they described the single commercial register as a "governmental revolution," unprecedented for the Greek public administration so far, adding that nonetheless all should start somewhere.