Summary record of the second session of the Red Tape Council

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

Attendance: 18 Council members from 12 countries

Open Table sittings: Asia-Pacific, 06:00 UTC; Europe/Africa/Americas, 16:00 UTC

Agenda: Review of reports on permit-related burdens; discussion of the Council’s evidence base and the five-part pattern test; consideration of published permit times and the Council’s open letter to mayors and city executives; next steps.

1. The Red Tape Council held its second session on 23 March 2026 in two Open Table sittings. The Asia-Pacific sitting began at 06:00 UTC and the Europe/Africa/Americas sitting began at 16:00 UTC. The session was chaired by Edna Assunção. The attendance record comprised 18 Council members from 12 countries. Members were reminded that the Open Table format enabled participation across time zones while keeping the same agenda and recording process for both sittings.

2. The Chair opened the session by recalling that the Council’s agenda item, RT-001, concerned the effects of administrative requirements on small businesses. She noted that the Council was at an evidence-gathering stage. Its task was to describe recurring practices and assess whether reports established a pattern, not to reach conclusions about individual public bodies or to attribute fault to particular officials. Members were asked to distinguish reported experience from independently verified facts and to identify what further information would help test each concern.

3. The Chair recalled the Assembly’s five-part pattern test: Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration. She said that the test was intended to make decisions traceable and to prevent a small number of vivid accounts from being treated as sufficient proof of a general practice. The Council would consider whether reports described the same type of administrative barrier, how often it arose, whether accounts were consistent, how widely it was reported and whether corroborating material was available. Members were asked not to treat the five elements as a substitute for careful reading of the underlying accounts.

4. The Council reviewed the aggregate evidence available as of 23 March. It had received 17 reports concerning permits, from 10 countries. The median amount at stake was approximately US$3,576. Fifteen reports had been filed in the preceding 30 days. Members noted that these figures described reports received, not the prevalence of permit delays across all small businesses or all jurisdictions. The Council agreed that future summaries should retain this distinction and should not present the reported amount at stake as a measure of public cost or total economic impact.

5. Members reviewed the distribution of reports by country. India had four reports; Canada, Argentina, Brazil and the United States had two each; and Singapore, Türkiye and Pakistan had one each. The Chair said that the list was a report count, not a ranking of regulatory performance. Members observed that a country count alone could not establish whether an experience was local, national or associated with a particular type of permit. They agreed that any later public account should describe the available coverage plainly and avoid implying that the reports represented a statistically representative survey.

6. Ravi Menon of Pune, India, described the importance of recording the stage at which an application stalled. He said that a general account of delay could conceal distinct problems, including uncertainty about required documents, repeated requests for information or waiting for a decision after submission. He proposed that the report form ask members to record the stage, the information given about next steps and whether a service-time commitment had been published. The Council agreed that these details could help compare accounts without assuming that every delay had the same cause.

7. Lucas Ferreira of Curitiba, Brazil, said that a permit process could impose costs even when the official fee was modest or absent. He referred to time spent preparing documents, making follow-up enquiries and postponing an activity while an application remained unresolved. He cautioned that members might not be able to calculate those costs precisely. The Council noted that the existing median amount at stake should therefore be reported as an approximate figure supplied through the reporting process, with no claim that it captured all indirect costs.

8. Camila Rojas of Buenos Aires, Argentina, raised the issue of consistency between instructions provided at different points in a process. She said that an applicant might receive one set of requirements at the outset and later be asked for additional material. The Chair asked that the account be treated as a report of an experience, not as a finding about a particular authority. Members agreed that future evidence collection should record whether requirements were published, whether they changed during the application and whether the applicant was told why further material was needed.

9. Amina Yusuf of Karachi, Pakistan, emphasized that the absence of a stated service time made it difficult for an applicant to plan. She said that a published time could support both the applicant and the administering office by setting an understandable expectation. Members discussed the Council’s 18 March open letter to mayors and city executives, RC/RT/2026/20, which invited public authorities to publish permit times. The Council noted that publication of a service time would not, on its own, establish that a process was accessible or timely in practice; reports would still be needed to examine actual experience.

10. Harpreet Gill of Toronto, Canada, observed that a digital application route could reduce repeated visits but could also create obstacles where instructions, document requirements or status updates were unclear. The Chair noted that RT-001 included a proposed one-stop digital process as a possible element of a future standard, but that the Council had not adopted a standard or decided the final wording of that proposal. Members agreed that the evidence should distinguish the availability of an online channel from whether an applicant could complete and track the process through it.

11. Mei Lin Tan of Singapore asked how the Council should treat applications for which no decision was communicated by a stated deadline. Members discussed the idea of a deadline for action, including the proposed concept of “silence is consent” for permits. They recognized that the concept raised questions about the types of permits to which it might apply and about safeguards where public health, safety or other interests required a decision. The Council made no determination on those questions. It agreed that the concept remained an item for evidence and consultation rather than a settled recommendation.

12. Elif Yılmaz of Istanbul, Türkiye, asked that the Council consider differences in team size when describing the practical effect of administrative requirements. The data available to the Council showed that 47 per cent of reporting members worked alone, 41 per cent had teams of 2–9, 6 per cent had teams of 10–49, and 6 per cent had teams of 50–249. Members agreed that these figures were relevant context for understanding the reports, but should not be used to assume that all businesses of a given size experienced the same burden. The Council would preserve the categories when summarizing the evidence.

13. The Chair presented the World Bank’s B-READY 2025 findings as external context, not as a substitute for the Council’s own evidence. The publication covered 101 economies and reported an average score of approximately 60 per cent for “business ready”; its public-services scores were approximately 23 per cent below its regulatory-framework scores.¹ Members noted that the comparison supported further examination of how rules are implemented through public services. They also agreed that the Council should cite the findings accurately and should not infer that they measured the experiences recorded in Reseated’s permit reports.

14. Members considered whether the evidence was sufficient to proceed to a draft fix. The Chair summarized the current position as an initial body of reports requiring continued review. No motion was made to declare that RT-001 had passed the five-part pattern test. The Council did not adopt a draft standard, endorse a model permit process or make findings about any named jurisdiction. Members agreed that the next stage should be to improve the evidence record, test whether accounts shared identifiable features and report uncertainty alongside any emerging pattern.

15. On the Chair’s proposal, the Council agreed to continue gathering reports focused on permits and to encourage respondents to include dates, stages, published instructions, stated service times, follow-up steps and any available written explanation of a decision or delay. Members would be reminded not to include unnecessary personal or commercially sensitive information. The Council also agreed to keep a distinction between a reported absence of a deadline and a reported failure to meet a published deadline. These decisions were procedural and did not alter the Council’s agenda item or establish a substantive standard.

16. The Council agreed that its public communications should use aggregate figures supplied in the reporting record and should explain their limits. It would not identify a member’s business, publish an individual account without permission or describe a report as verified merely because it had been received. Any future statement about a recurring practice would be tied to the five-part pattern test and would identify what remained uncertain. The Chair confirmed that members could remain anonymous unless they chose a public seat.

17. The Council reviewed the actions arising from the session. Ravi Menon would prepare proposed additions to the report form concerning the stage of an application, published instructions and service-time information. Lucas Ferreira would prepare a short note on how to record direct and indirect amounts at stake without implying false precision. Amina Yusuf would organize a summary of the questions raised by the open letter on published permit times. The Chair would oversee the consolidation of these materials and circulate them to Council members for review. These tasks were evidence-development work; none authorized a public finding or a representation on behalf of a public authority.

18. Members asked that the next session consider the completeness of the report form, the quality and limits of corroborating material, and whether the evidence showed recurring features across locations. The Chair said that the Council would continue to use the Open Table format and would publish a record of decisions and action items. Members were invited to submit further reports through the established process rather than send identifiable accounts through public discussion channels.

19. The Chair closed the session by thanking participants in both sittings. She reiterated that the Council’s work was to describe administrative practices affecting small businesses and to develop a fair, evidence-based proposal if the reports supported one. The next session of the Red Tape Council was scheduled for 20 April 2026, with sittings at 06:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC. The Secretariat would circulate the agenda and participation details in advance.

Decisions and action items

Source

1. World Bank, B-READY 2025. ¹

Notes and sources

Sources

1. World Bank, B-READY 2025