Mrs. Jemima Oware
THE OFFICE of the Registrar of Companies (ORC), has announced it will soon begin to deal with some 500,000 entities that are unregistered but operating in the country.
Jemima Oware, Registrar General, disclosed this to some news editors at a meeting held at the office of the Registrar Generals Department last Thursday in Accra.
“As we speak now, there are over 500,000 businesses that have failed to renew their registration. Now that we have office of the Registrar of Companies to solely address some of these issues, we will continue with our sensitisation drive after which most of these unregistered companies businesses would be deleted from the system,” she said
According to her, the setting up of the ORC would bring dynamism to the business environment by encouraging good corporate governance, to be able to delete ‘dead’ companies from the register in accordance with legislation and help develop support systems that provide speedy information for other companies
The Office of the Registrar of Companies (ORC), established by an Act of Parliament through the companies Act 2019 (Act 992), has been decoupled from the Registrar General’s Department with the sole mandate to register all businesses in Ghana.
These business entities, according to the Act, includes “Private and public companies unlimited by shares, private and public companies limited by guarantee such as churches, schools, NGO’s, CSO’s, associations, unions and professional bodies”.
Mrs. Oware also mentioned that though the Act aims at addressing the weaknesses facing most people in the registration of new businesses, it required time and corporation.
She, therefore, asked Ghanaians to cooperate with them as efforts were been made to address the challenges while complying with the mandates of the acts.
She said “We are not going to stop what we were or are doing currently but the ORC will be more focused, provide better services, people will now have an opportunity to register online without any difficulty, though we already do this, it will be better. Don’t forget due to some of these challenges lots of people wants to move to the premises of our offices for someone to support them.”
She indicated that opportunities would also be given to people who may need the assistance of the staff with a transformed ISO certified information system.
The Companies’ Act (2019), Act 992, was passed on May 2, 2019, and received Presidential assent on August 2, 2019.
The ORC will use the offices of the Registrar Generals Department in Accra as its head office with other satellites offices in Kumasi, Sekondi Takoradi, Sunyani and Tamale.
BY Ebenezer K. Amponsah