IPA halts delisting exercise

By CLARISSA MOI
THE Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) has put on hold the deregistration exercise of companies which failed to comply with regulations, managing director Clarence Hoot says.
He told The National yesterday that a lot of companies had been hit hard due to the Covid-19 situation hence IPA was considering deferring the exercise to next year.
The notice of intention to deregister non-compliant companies had been given out by the office of the registrar of companies last November where the first batch of deregistration was conducted in January while the second one planned to be carried out in March was put on hold due to the Covid-19 state of emergency.
“Currently, IPA has given a lot of help to businesses like waivers and other assistance and we’ve realised that a lot of companies were hit hard (during the Covid-19 state of emergency) so we are considering starting again next year,” Hoot said.
He said after the first deregistration exercise in Jan, the feedback from the companies had not been good, however, a good number of companies had came back to IPA and updated their records.
“But we understand there needs to be a little bit of flexibility because of tough times now.”
A total of 4,666 companies have been removed from IPA’s registry in January during the deregistration exercise for the first batch of companies which failed to file annual returns up to year 2000.
An annual return is a yearly update of public information about a company on the IPA’s company register which includes addresses, details of directors and shareholders.
It is a requirement by the companies’ office that their records are up to date for the purpose of correspondence between the office of the registrar of companies and the companies.