FG extends special window for business registration

In a bid to increase the number of registered Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), the Federal Government has, on Monday, May 6, 2019, extended by three months the special window for Nigerians to register their businesses by three months.

This special-window involves reducing the fee for the registration of a business name from N10,000 to N5,000 to help MSMEs formalise their operations.

While making this disclosure at the first quarter MSMEs stakeholders’ meeting held at the Presidential Villa, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo said the move to extend the period for the 50 percent discount of business registration was informed by the success recorded so far in the process.

Recall that the Government, through the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), started applying the discount since October 2018.

The recorded success: Registration of MSMEs grew from “54,000 to 163,000 within six months” of approving the discount.

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What influenced the extension: The move to extend the reduction cost deadline is believed to help deepen the benefits of its reform initiatives.

More so, the extension aims to enable more MSMEs to formalise their businesses, which will enable them to own corporate accounts with banks, have access to loans, grants, and other Government interventions.

85,635 new companies registered in 2018: CAC had, however, disclosed that it registered 85,635 new companies in 2018. It said the number of newly registered companies dropped by 2.57 per cent in 2018, compared to the 87,891 companies that were registered in 2017.

It would be recalled that as part of efforts to enhance the ease of doing business in Nigeria, the commission announced some far-reaching decisions, part of which is the completion of a company’s registration process within a 24-hours period.

The commission had in February last year, also concluded plans to close the manual registration of businesses and corporations. This was reported to have addressed some of the challenges usually encountered by people in the course of registering their businesses.