The Law on Facilitation of Business Licensing
One of the most important parts of this Act is Article 1 which obliges governmental and executive bodies to take necessary measures in order to grant a license to registration-based businesses within three days. The lengthy and time-consuming process of obtaining business licenses in Iran was one of the most important legal barriers to economic activities and the new Act has tried to remove it.
It should be noted that according to Article 1(3) of the Act, should any of the licensing authorities neither accept or reject the applicant’s request within the mentioned period of time, the requested business license would be issued automatically through the national portal of licenses and it would be provided to the applicant. All legal and trade union responsibilities with respect to issued licenses, which lie with the licensing authorities, also apply to the licenses issued in this process. Should the application is rejected, the licensing authority is obliged to inform the applicant in writing of the reasons and documents based on which the decision has been made.
Another change made by Article 1(7) has tried to make it easier for businesses to start. This note sets out rules that prevent unnecessary measures to receive inquiries or renew licenses for businesses. In this way, the difficulties of dealing with administrative affairs for business owners are reduced. This method also prevents probable corruption.
According to this note, “as of six months after the Act has come into effect, any inquiry, renewal or revocation of the license can be done only through the unique ID of the license issued through the national portal of licenses. Inquiring about the unique ID issued to license holders by the national portal of licenses must be available to the public. The National Center for Studying, Monitoring and Improving Businesses is required to issue a unique ID for business licenses obtained prior to this Act, upon written or electronic request made by the licensee, within one month after the date of the request made. “Businesses that do not have a unique ID within two years after the date on which this Act has come into effect, are legally considered unlicensed.
Article 1 of the FBL Act also provides for a unique license ID for applicants and real and legal owners of businesses. In addition to this ID, the legislator has stressed the establishment and completion of the “National Portal of Licenses” and has obliged the government to do so. These two tools are supposed to help increase transparency in this area and reduce unnecessary contacts between business owners and different governmental bodies by reducing common administrative bureaucracies and facilitating communication and exchange of information between the two mentioned groups. . At the same time, such a move will make the scope of business licenses to become more intelligent and this intelligence will cause positive effects on economic activities.
