As part of plans to comply with the Federal Government’s Executive Order on ease of doing business in Nigeria, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has revealed plans to further incorporate technology into its processes to expedite the registration of businesses in the country.
Statutorily, business registration takes close to 24 hours or in some cases days. However, the Acting Registrar-General of the commission, Azuka Azinge disclosed that the agency will work towards reducing the time frame of the exercise to just 2hours before the end of the year.
In 2017, the then acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo issued an Executive Order designed to promote transparency and efficiency in Nigeria’s sluggish and cumbersome business environment.
According to the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report for 2018, Nigeria was placed on the the 145th spot, 24 positions better than the 169th spot the nation was ranked in the 2017 report. Sadly, business processes are still marked by queues and paper works at most government agencies.
According to Itedgenews, the CAC has already commenced a 24 hour online company name registration process to increase efficiency and make starting a business less tasking and time consuming for Nigerians.
In 2017, CAC automated the registration of business and company names and incorporated trustees through its web portal – the Companies Registration Portal (CRP).
While speaking on the new development during a visit by the Senate Committee on Trade and Investment to the commission’s Lagos office in Ikeja recently, Azuka said, “The post-registration is still manual. We are hoping that before the next few months, we should have that online, so that the issue of paying annual returns, which is still very cumbersome at the moment, can be easily achieved.
“We are still working and improving on the pre-registration infrastructure platform. We are hoping that as we continue to do that, the pre-registration process will also become faster, with fewer complaints from the customers. We want to reduce the 24 hours it takes to register a company to two hours. We are hoping to do that by the end of the year or before that,” he added.
It is worth knowing that the 2018 World Bank report ranked Nigeria among the 10 top countries that improved on reforms in areas such as starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering a property, getting credit and paying taxes.
