President surprised

The National Business

By PETER ESILA
PAPUA New Guinea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PNGCCI) president John Leahy, pictured, was surprised again to see the chamber listed among 5,000 companies to be deregistered by Investment Promotion Authority (IPA).
Leahy told The National yesterday that he thought the name was cleared about five years ago in a similar exercise.
“I thought it was already deregistered because that was the old company that we registered as a company limited by guarantee. But it is a dormant company that we do not use anymore. PNG Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Inc.) is an association under the association’s incorporations Act,” Leahy said.
“It sort of blew up once before when they actually listed it for deregistration.”
IPA acting registrar of companies Harriet Kokiva confirmed yesterday that according to its system status, PNGCCI Ltd was still “registered”.
Kokiva clarified that the deregistration exercise was only for companies and not for associations.
Leahy said it was not an issue to PNGCCI and it would be okay to clean it up again.
He said the PNGCCI Ltd was created under the old Companies’ Act as a company limited by guarantee.
“This means that there are no shareholders, and company limited by guarantee, with a sort of thing for clubs and associations,” he said.
“Under the old Companies’ Act, they had company Ltd by guarantee, but under the new Companies Act 1997, there was no such thing as a company limited by guarantee.
“Under the law now, there is no such thing as a company limited by guarantee, and all the old companies that were limited by guarantee just became an ordinary company.
“But for an ordinary company, who is going to be the shareholders?
“For an association like the PNG Chamber or any sort of clubs and associations, you do not want any sort of shareholders to control the show,” Leahy said.
“In an association, the members control it.
“The PNGCCI is now is an association, incorporation under the Associations Incorporations Act, there are not any shareholders, there are members and the members are bound by the rules of the associations, which have to be registered with the registrar.”