Registrar General, Mrs Jemima Oware, has disclosed that the process of registering a business at the Registrar General’s Department has drastically reduced due to the use of automation in executing tasks of such nature.

According to her, prior to “automation”, it could take an individual as long as three weeks to have a business registered. The reason being, “searching of the business name” alone could take as much as “two weeks”, as the official would have to go through the manual registers.

Speaking on the topic: ‘Business registration in Ghana today’, Mrs Oware explained that currently at the “touch of a button” a potential name for a business can be searched, as the most important thing for any business is to have a name.

The Registrar General admitted that automation has indeed “eased up” business dealings with clients as most of the agencies that have anything to do with business registration have been linked with “us electronically”.

“Our system speaks to other systems such as Ghanapost, metropolitan and municipal assembly. The Ghanapost links up to that institution so that we don’t need to go there for a business operating permit anymore. Once you complete the registration in our office, you get the temporary business operating permit, at least for three months. So, we have rolled up or merged our processes with institutions that require licensing to get you started off. That I believe is a way of easing business. So now we’ve reduced the steps from over seventeen to three… because we’ve merged our forms [and] merged our processes”.
Mrs Jemima Oware

Registration of businesses with NIA cards

In compliance with government’s policy on business registration from the beginning of next year, January 2022, the Registrar General’s Department will solely use the NIA card. Commenting on this, Mrs Oware intimated that her outfit’s system is being upgraded to accept only the NIA card. In the interim, she revealed that the department has been doing “both” the TIN number and the NIA card, which could prove a challenge to most businesses.

For instance, Mrs Oware indicated that her outfit’s system speaks to Ghana Revenue Authority system to generate the tax identification number. From January next year, she noted that the same outline will happen with the NIA system being able to identify people in “our system”.

Touching on the impact of COVID on the Department, Mr Oware described those moments as a “challenge” because it caused “us to lose so much revenue”. The challenges, she acknowledged, caused her outfit to change the way “we were doing business entirely”, as the staff “had to run a shift”.

Filing of businesses, the Registrar General insisted also went down “considerably” although by the “grace of God” things have started picking up.

“I think most of the publication we’ve been making about businesses having to file returns and renew their businesses, our office is back to what it was before. It is quite full but at the same time we ensure that we keep the COVID protocols”.
Mrs Jemima Oware