CAC set to register companies within two hours of application

The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has reiterated its commitment to complete company registration processes within two hours of the application starting from December this year.

The Acting Registrar-General, CAC, Azuka Azinge, stated this on Thursday during the oversight visit of the Senate Committee on Trade and Investment to the commission’s Lagos office in Alausa, Ikeja.

She said the various innovations that the commission had put in place had created an enabling environment for customers to register their businesses within 24 hours in line with global standards.

This, according to her, has contributed to the improvement in the country’s global ranking in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report by 24 places in 2017.

Azinge stated, “The post-registration is still manual. We are hoping that before the next few months, we should have that online, so that the issue of paying annual returns, which is still very cumbersome at the moment, can be easily achieved.

“We are still working and improving on the pre-registration infrastructure platform. We are hoping that as we continue to do that, the pre-registration process will also become faster, with less complaints from the customers. We want to reduce the 24 hours it takes to register a company to two hours. We are hoping to do that maybe by the end of the year or before that.”

Noting that the Senate committee had already conducted a public hearing on the amendment of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, she said the enactment of a new CAMA, reflecting some of the best practices in company registration and administration, would boost the country’s global ranking.