Authority de-registers over 4,600 companies

The National Business

By CLARISSA MOI
THE total number of companies removed from the Investment Promotion Authority’s (IPA) registry has been reduced to 4,666 after the notice of removal list was updated, an official says.
Acting registrar of companies Harriet Kokiva in response to The National on why the notice of removal list was not published on Tuesday as mentioned during a media conference last Friday, said some companies had fully complied with regulations, however, their names were still shown on the list.
“We were not able to publish as announced because the list needed to be updated again,” she said.
“Some companies had fully complied but their names were still on the list.
“We removed about 58 companies from the list, hence, the compliance rate increased to 6.68 per cent.
“This means the total number of companies which will be removed from the registry has been reduced to 4,666.”
Kokiva said the finalised list was submitted to The National on Tuesday and was published yesterday.
Kokiva announced last Friday that the first batch of companies who had failed to file annual returns up to 2000 had been removed from the IPA’s registry. She said this removal came on the back of the notice of intention issued on last Nov 7 to remove 5,000 companies that had failed to file annual returns since 2000 in accordance with section 368(1) of the Companies Act 1997 (as amended).
Kokiva said those companies de-registered would face several consequences such as having their status changed from “registered” to “removed” and those companies would not able to conduct any form of business activities.
She added that as per Section 372 of the Companies Act 1997, all the assets of those companies removed would be vested in the office of the registrar of companies, their accounts at the banks would be closed and balances transferred to the trust account of the companies’ office and any properties belonging to those companies would also be transferred to the trust account.
“Companies that have been removed can apply for a reinstatement and we can put them back onto the register again.”
Kokiva said there were two ways that the companies could apply for reinstatement:

  • Apply to the registrar within six years of being de-registered; or,
  • Apply to the court.

She said that a second batch of 5,000 non-compliant companies was expected to be published towards the end of March.