Office of the Registrar of Companies encourages business registration, steps up public education

In line with its mission to create attractive business environment to promote business growth and national development, the Office of the Registrar of Companies (ORC), is urging unregistered businesses to register with the Office to streamline their activities.The Office as part of efforts to create awareness about its services and the importance of business registration, has been engaging in series of public education to encourage businesses to register.Until its establishment in 2019 following the passage of the Companies Act, 2019, Act 992, business registration formed part of the mandate the Registrar General Department (RGD).However, a committee which was set up to review the Companies Act 1963, Act 179 saw the need for the registration of businesses to be separated from the activities of the RGD - a decision that gave birth to the ORC.Aside its core mandate of registering companies, business names, subsidiary business names, partnerships and professional bodies, the ORC is also in charge of offi cial liquidation of companies and regulators of insolvency practitioners.To enhance its visibility and promote the various services being provided by the Office, it has been embarking on quarterly public sensitisation on its functions to the public.In the Ashanti, the ORC has conducted one public education or the other in virtually all district capitals.Nana Ama Akyiaa Prempeh, the Chief State Attorney of the Registrar of Companies in the Ashanti Region, told the Ghana News agency in an interview in Kumasi that, one of the changes in the Act is that the ORC had been given the power to create awareness and sensitise the public on its activities.According to her, because of the monopoly for registering businesses as a government agency, the assumption over the years was that businesses would come for registration without publicity, but the current Act now empowers the ORC to engage the public on its activities.The public education drive, according to her, had seen an increase in business registration in the Ashanti Region in the last few months which has also translated into increase in revenue.Touching on the benefits of business registration, Nana Yaa Prempeh said it gives the business credibility and enhances branding of the business.'Registering your business helps you to create a niche for yourself within the business environment and when you need credit and you are not registered, no one will offer you credit,' she stressed the importance of business registration.She also spoke about how registered businesses could subscribe to government programmes and urged businesses in the region, however small they are, to register and enjoy the enormous benefits that comes with it.Source: Ghana News Agency