Many registered businesses are dormant-Registrar-General's Department

Accra, Sept. 11, GNA - Current data at the Registrar General's Department (RGD) indicate that 442,070 Business Names and 142,174 Companies Limited by Shares have been registered at the Department.

The Department has also registered 33, 190 companies limited by guarantee, 14, 932 of business partnerships, 2, 993 Subsidiary Business Names, and 1,272 External Companies.

Mrs Jemima Oware, Chief State Attorney of RGD who made the disclosure in Accra at the weekend, further revealed active businesses operating in the country were fewer than the statistics.

She attributed the situation to the fraudulent tactics employed by some people who begrudgingly register their companies and businesses for the sole purpose of procuring bank loans and travelling visas.

Speaking at a day's stakeholders' workshop, Mrs Oware expressed worry that a few individuals used their 93housemaids" and other ill-qualified relatives as their secretaries for the purpose of getting registered.

Mrs Oware later told the Ghana News Agency that she was optimistic that the implementation of the new Government e-registration (GeReG) system, which is under the e-government project, would clean the data and migrate credible, reliable and accurate data on businesses to inject efficiency and trustworthiness into the system.

"The rational is also to gather as much credible, accurate and relevant data on companies into the system without giving private sector too much stress. The implementation of the GeReg exercise will be done in phases beginning in October 2011 and it is expected to end in March 2012," she said stressing the need for companies and businesses to partake in the re-registration exercise.

Mrs Oware said she was hopeful the new Company Act, when passed into law, would address the issue of fraudulent means of acquiring registration certificate at the RGD.

Earlier, she underscored the importance of the re-registration exercise saying that the project made it easier to do business in Ghana due to the more efficient business registration processes and faster response time for registration and updates.

She said through the integration with other e-government application, interaction and information sharing with relevant government agencies could be done efficiently thereby reducing the turnaround time to complete registration and update at the RGD.

Mrs Oware described the GeReg project as a public, private partnership project with Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet) which is funded by the World Bank and the government to fully integrate both RGD and Ghana Revenue Authority on a common platform.

She said five years ago, it was widely recognized that business registration in the country was unsatisfactory.

Mrs Oware said it was against this background that the Danish government provided a grant through its Business Sector Programme Support project to assist and facilitate the reform of the country's business registration and to improve business registration services to provide an enabling environment for private sector development.

She said:The DANIDA initiative was formally made an integral part of the Medium-Term Private Sector Development Strategy in 2005, paving the way for the reform programme to be funded from development partner pool fund based on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the government and its development partners." Mr Paul Kwakyi, E-government project Manager for the Ghana Revenue Authority, said the re-registration exercise would improve the quality of customer records, facilitate improved levels of services and act as a basis for access to online government services. The services include online filing of tax returns and payments, communications via email, chat, online appointment and scheduling and portal. Mr Kwakyi said the re-registration would 93eliminate and prevent multiple registrations, issue and manage tax identification numbers and effectively manage taxpayer information."

Nana Ama Prempeh, Principal State Attorney of RGD, said the purpose of the stakeholders' workshop was to highlight the changes in the new business registration processes and to solicit feedback from the participants to complete the business registration regime.

"We intend to make the majority of our contact with our customers electronic. This=85 will reduce stress and corruption if not eradicate it entirely from the registration of businesses," she said.