Summary record of the ninth session of the Red Tape Council

Chair: Edna Assunção, Chair of the Red Tape Council, São Paulo, Brazil

Attendance: The consolidated attendance roll recorded 122 members from 41 countries. The session was conducted in two sittings: Asia-Pacific, 06:00 UTC; and Europe, Africa and the Americas, 16:00 UTC.

Agenda: Review of the interim pattern assessment for RT-001; examination of reports and submissions on permits and licensing; status of the Days to Open index and Permit Timer; next steps for evidence collection and the development of a possible response; other business.

I. Proceedings

1. The ninth session of the Red Tape Council was held on 24 October 2026 in two Open Table sittings. The Asia-Pacific sitting opened at 06:00 UTC and the Europe, Africa and Americas sitting opened at 16:00 UTC. Edna Assunção chaired both sittings. The record was consolidated after the second sitting so that comments made in either time zone could be considered together.

2. The Chair recalled that the Council’s agenda item, RT-001, concerns the burden that fragmented, slow or unpredictable public processes may place on small businesses. The item asks whether a future standard should call for a small-business impact test for new rules affecting businesses, a one-stop digital process, published service times and a deadline after which silence may count as consent for permits. She emphasized that these proposals remain the question under examination, not an adopted Council position.

3. The Chair noted that the Rules of Procedure, RC/A/2026/2, require the Council to assess reported practices against five parts of a pattern test: Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration. The Council’s work must distinguish a recurring, corroborated pattern from an individual account. It must then develop a draft fix, consult publicly, seek an Assembly ballot and, if adopted, send letters to the chief executives able to act. The present session concerned evidence and the next step in that sequence; it did not open a public consultation or an Assembly ballot.

4. The Chair referred members to the interim pattern review, RC/RT/2026/N.1, dated 29 September. That review found that permit and licensing delays met three of the five tests. She said that the finding was a threshold assessment, not a conclusion that every reported delay had a common cause or that a particular administrative remedy would work in every jurisdiction. The Council should not infer which specific tests were satisfied beyond what the published review records.

5. In the Asia-Pacific sitting, Budi Santoso of Jakarta, Indonesia, described how an applicant may have to visit more than one office to understand which documents are required. He said that uncertainty about the next step can be as difficult to plan around as the time spent waiting. He asked the Council to keep separate the time spent preparing an application, the time an application is under review and the time lost when an applicant is asked to correct or resubmit it.

6. Mei Lin of Singapore said that a stated service time is useful only if an applicant can identify when the clock begins and what events pause it. She urged the Council to consider publishing the service standard, the actual elapsed time and the reasons for any pause in a form that small firms can understand. She cautioned that a single average could conceal long delays for a minority of applicants.

7. Ananya Rao of Mumbai, India, asked the Council to treat digital access as a means of reducing repeated trips and duplicate submissions, not as a reason to exclude applicants who need assistance. She supported examining a single point of entry for forms and status updates, while noting that a digital process should make clear which authority is responsible for a decision and how an applicant can seek clarification.

8. Litia Vakalala of Suva, Fiji, said that the value of an online process depends on whether it works reliably in the places where small businesses operate. She requested that future evidence record whether applicants could complete the process remotely, whether information was available in accessible formats and whether an offline route remained available. She considered these details relevant to assessing spread and consistency, rather than reasons to presume the same experience in every location.

9. In the Europe, Africa and Americas sitting, Ana Ferreira of São Paulo, Brazil, urged the Council to preserve the applicant’s timeline and correspondence when validating reports. She said that records showing the date of submission, requests for additional material and the date of a decision could help distinguish a long review from a file that was incomplete. She supported anonymized evidence summaries that would not identify a member or the member’s business.

10. Chinedu Okafor of Lagos, Nigeria, said that an applicant may face uncertainty even when a permit is eventually granted, because the applicant may not know whether a delay is ordinary or whether a further inquiry is needed. He asked the Council to investigate whether published status information and a named channel for questions could reduce uncertainty without requiring the Council to prescribe a single processing time for every type of permit.

11. Giulia Conti of Bologna, Italy, cautioned that a silence-is-consent deadline would require careful definition. Members would need to understand which applications it covered, what notice an authority must give, how a deadline is calculated and what exceptions might apply. She said that an automatic outcome should not be presented as a settled solution before the Council had tested its feasibility and possible consequences through evidence and consultation.

12. Daniel Mokoena of Johannesburg, South Africa, supported continued comparison across cities, provided that the Days to Open index explains its method and does not treat unlike permit categories as equivalent. He said that clear definitions would make the findings more useful to both small businesses and public bodies. He also requested that the Council report missing observations rather than allowing a reader to assume that unreported information meant there was no delay.

13. Sarah Mensah of Accra, Ghana, said that the Permit Timer could help document the interval between application and decision if participants receive clear instructions and can record interruptions consistently. She asked the Council to explain how entries would be checked, how personal information would be protected and how a reported experience would be distinguished from an independently verified administrative record.

14. Members then reviewed the Council’s evidence position as at 24 October. The Red Tape Council had 122 members from 41 countries and had received 304 reports from 47 countries. The recorded median amount at stake was approximately US$4,277. The report count was distributed across the United States (48), India (27), Brazil (24), Canada (17), the United Kingdom (16), Italy (15), Nigeria (14) and Germany (10), with further reports from other countries. The Council noted that these are report totals, not a measure of the prevalence of permit delays in any national population.

15. The Council noted that the reported situations were categorized as permit cases, and that 37 reports had been filed in the preceding 30 days. Reporters identified a range of team sizes: 40 per cent were working alone, 38 per cent had teams of 2–9, 17 per cent had teams of 10–49 and 5 per cent had teams of 50–249. Members said that this profile underscored the need to test whether an administrative process can be navigated without dedicated compliance staff. The figures do not establish that team size caused a particular outcome.

16. The Council considered the four evidence submissions on the RT-001 agenda item: RC/RT/2026/S.1, dated 23 March; S.2, dated 4 May; S.3, dated 22 July; and S.4, dated 15 September. Members agreed that submissions should be read alongside the report record and the interim review, not as independent proof of every claim within them. The Chair reminded participants that member accounts must remain anonymous unless the member has chosen a public seat, and that no member’s business is to be named in Council reporting.

17. Members reviewed the Days to Open index, which is being developed across 30 cities, and the Permit Timer campaign. They agreed that these initiatives can help collect comparable experience, but that neither should be described as a completed assessment of all participating cities. The Council should publish the scope, definitions, collection period and limitations alongside any results. It should also avoid presenting a city comparison as a ranking of the quality or integrity of public officials.

18. The Chair recalled the World Bank’s B-READY 2025 findings, which cover 101 economies. The edition reported an average of about 60 per cent on its business-readiness measure and public-services scores about 23 per cent below regulatory-framework scores. The full 164-economy edition was expected at the end of 2026. Members noted that this global evidence provides context for examining public services, but does not by itself establish the Council’s five-part pattern for permit delays or determine the content of an RT-001 standard.¹

19. The Council also reviewed the Secretariat’s earlier engagement on the issue, including the open letter to mayors and city executives on publishing permit times, RC/RT/2026/20; the letter to the World Bank B-READY team offering the Days to Open survey, RC/RT/2026/21; the letter to the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship directorate on small-business impact tests, RC/RT/2026/22; and the open letter to licensing boards on silence-is-consent deadlines, RC/RT/2026/23. Members emphasized that these communications are outreach and requests for engagement, not endorsements or replies on behalf of the recipients.

20. Members considered the interim public letter, RC/RT/2026/24, on what 30 cities had told the Council through the Days to Open work. They noted that the document was explicitly interim and agreed that further collection and verification would be needed before drawing broader conclusions. The Council also noted RC/RT/2026/25, the 23 October letter to members reporting the three-of-five pattern result. No new pattern-test conclusion was adopted at this session.

21. In discussion of possible next steps, members supported documenting the practical elements that a later draft might address: a clear point of entry; an identifiable responsible authority; published service times with definitions; accessible status information; and an explained route for correcting an incomplete application. They did not settle on draft language, a universal deadline or the operation of silence-is-consent. Members considered those questions to require further review of the evidence and subsequent public consultation.

22. Members further agreed that any future draft should make room for differences among permit types and jurisdictions. A small-business impact test would need a comprehensible scope and a way to record effects on businesses of different sizes. A one-stop digital process would need to identify its service boundaries and safeguards. Published service times would need clear start, stop and reporting rules. A silence-is-consent proposal would need a defined application class, notice requirements and exceptions. These were recorded as issues for investigation, not decisions on substance.

23. On the evidence record, members requested continued attention to corroboration. The Council should, where available and appropriate, compare a member’s account with dated application records, correspondence, public service information or other evidence supplied with consent. The absence of a document should not automatically invalidate a report, and the presence of one document should not automatically establish a general pattern. The Secretariat was asked to maintain privacy protections and to tell members what evidence is useful before requesting additional material.

24. There was no objection to keeping the five-part assessment open for further evidence. The Chair stated that the Council would not move directly from the three-of-five finding to a draft fix without a recorded assessment of the remaining evidence and an explicit decision on the next procedural step. She reiterated that, if a draft is later authorized, it must undergo public consultation before an Assembly ballot. Only after adoption may letters be sent to chief executives able to adopt the standard, with each seat tracked according to the established status categories.

25. On other business, members asked the Secretariat to ensure that public-facing campaign materials distinguish Council evidence from external research and from proposals still under consideration. They requested plain-language explanations of the five tests and of the difference between the total number of reports, the number of countries represented and the number of members. The Chair agreed that these distinctions should be preserved in future updates.

II. Conclusions and decisions

1. The Council took note of RC/RT/2026/N.1 and its finding that permit and licensing delays met three of the five pattern tests. The Council did not amend the interim finding, identify additional tests as satisfied, or declare the five-test process complete.

2. The Council agreed to continue evidence collection and validation for RT-001. The Days to Open index and Permit Timer remain evidence-gathering initiatives. Their findings are not to be represented as a final city-wide assessment unless and until the methodology and results support that description.

3. The Council did not authorize a draft Small Business Impact Standard, a public consultation, an Assembly ballot or letters to chief executives. No final position was adopted on the proposed impact test, one-stop digital process, published service times or silence-is-consent deadline.

4. The Council reaffirmed that member accounts must be anonymized unless members elect a public seat; businesses are not to be named in member stories; and external research must be distinguished from Reseated evidence and Council proposals.

III. Action items

IV. Next session

Notes and sources

Sources

1. World Bank, B-READY 2025