A total of 500,000 business names and 5,000 companies will be deleted from the list of the Office of the Registrar of Companies (ORC) on December 31, 2024, the Registrar of Companies, Mrs Jemima Oware, has said.
According to her, ORC would strike off all companies and business names that have failed to comply with a notice sent early this year to them to file their annual returns and financial statements before December 3, 2024.
Mrs Oware (seated middle) flanked by some executives of ORC and stakeholders after the engagement
“So if by the end of this year, these 5,000 companies and 500,000 business names haven’t complied, that means they are not doing business anymore and we will take them off our register,” she said.
Speaking at a stakeholder engagement in Accra yesterday, Mrs Oware said all companies that had been in default for years would be removed from the register.
The stakeholder engagement organised by ORC, was on the theme; “Strengthening partnership for effective corporate governance”.
The engagement seeks to update stakeholders on some few changes in the ORC system since its establishment in 2019 by the passage of the Companies Act, 2019 Act 992.
The Registrar noted that, the establishment of ORC came with a number of changes that most businesses have to be aware of and comply with henceforth.
Some of these changes, she said, all businesses need to change the suffixes at the end of their names to ensure that the ORC could easily identify and distinguish it from all other companies and businesses that were registered with them.
Mrs Oware explained that a company limited by shares, that has been using “limited” at the end of its name, now needs to change to either “L-T-D or limited company”, adding that for companies limited by guarantees, such as churches, associations, clubs, that normally have “foundation or organisation” at the end of its name, needed to change the end to L-B-G or limited by guarantee.
“For publicly listed companies, currently listed on the stock exchange, that still have limited at the end of their names, You have to change it to P-L-C or publicly listed companies, with that, if we are able to see that, then we are sure that at least you have filed your annual returns, you have updated us with your records,” she said.
Mrs Oware stressed that companies were supposed to file their annual returns 18 months after incorporation and then yearly thereafter.
Under the Ghana Economic Transformation Project, she said ORC was developing a state-of-the-art and robust software to migrate the office to a fully digital registration system to be known as the E-Business Registry System (EBRS).
According to her, the software would be deployed by April next year with the objective of increasing the usability of online business registration service, by replacing the existing system with a “best of breed” online business system.
Mrs Oware said the deployment of the software would reduce the turnaround time for their service delivery and improve ease of doing business in Ghana to attract investors to into the economy.
BY CECILIA YADA LAGBA
