The deadline for all registered companies to re-register is fast approaching

Valentine Muhamba Avatar
ZimConnect, Zimbabwe Companies Registration, e-Government

Back in 2019, the government was in the process of establishing a new law to govern companies. This piece of legislation was going to replace the Company’s Act. One of the requirements of the new law was that all registered companies would have to re-register when the law took effect.

The window for the re-registration period was 12 months from when the bill was passed into law. The Companies and Other Business Entities Act [24:31] passed in the first quarter of this year which gave companies up until March 2021 to re-register.

So why are they asking registered companies to re-register?

The major driving force behind this the e-government initiative. The govt is trying to improve the ease of doing business by replacing the manual registration with an electronic system. The new system also helps weed out businesses that are no longer active but still appear on the company registry.

The process is not going all too well…

As to be expected with anything that involves the government and a deadline there have been some issues. The first is congestion, with the deadline months away (which isn’t that much time) there has been a rush by business owners to get the process over and done with.

The rush has led to the second problem and that is the availability of the paper needed to print the new certificates of incorporation. According to reports the Registrar of Companies has run out of the paper needed to issue out the new certificates.

The lack of resources highlights poor planning on the part of the government. They should have had the provisions in place to meet the demand that the Registrar of Companies was going to face. But as mentioned before there is nothing that involves any government that has a deadline that isn’t riddled with problems.

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3 comments

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  1. Company registration experts

    This article is misleading on several fronts, obviously written by someone with some idea but have no real knowledge.

    1st, the major purpose of the new law is to create an updated companies register by deregistering non-functional ones. Zimbabwe has about 20000 companies being registered annually and the majority of these companies shall never operate.

    2nd, the old law was outdated and needed to be updated to include things like beneficial ownership, fiduciary responsibilities, trade name registrations, shareholding based on numbers rather than fixed prices, etc.

    3rd. The re-registration process has not even started as yet. The system is still being put into place. A recent statutory instrument has extended this by an additional 2 years.

    4th. There’s no special paper for certificates. It’s just 115gsm bond paper. The shortage was also not caused by increased demand, it’s just Printflow who failed to supply the printed certificates in time. As you know, the printing needs of all government departments are met by Printflow. This includes receipts and any certificates issued

    1. Company Reg Consultant

      Thank you for this explanation. The article is very misleading. On another note, the registrar of companies must issue a statement in the national press explaining their position.

  2. Tonderai

    I would have thought TZ would have focused on the tech angle of the problem. The new COBE Act, says there should be an electronic system used by DCIP but that system still doesn’t exist so all processes are still manual and will remain so for the near future. That is where we rely on TZ to report on. Similar problems exist at the JSC where courts were given a similar mandate for electronic court filings but there is nothing on the ground.

    You really shouldn’t just chop and change an article from the Newsday.

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