President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will today, July 22, 2022, launch the newly established Office of Registrar of Companies (ORC) to register and regulate all business entities in the country.
The ORC, carved out of the Registrar General’s Department, will execute the registration of businesses such as private public companies limited and unlimited by shares, private public companies limited by guarantee, including churches, schools, NGOs, CSOs, associations, unions, external companies and professional bodies.
Madam Jemima Oware, the Acting Registrar General of the RGD and Registrar of the ORC, at a media engagement, said unlike the RGD, the ORC would not be a department under the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice.
She said it would function as a company on its own with an eleven-member board.
The Companies Act 2019, Act 992, she said, established the ORC, to focus solely on business registration and licensing, whereas, the RGD would continue to deal with registrations of marriages, estates and industrial property rights.
“The Act stated that this new office, that is Office of Registrar of Companies, should be operationalised within two years,” she stressed.
Madam Oware noted that the establishment of the ORC was aimed towards addressing challenges with business registrations.
She disclosed that they were developing a software to make it possible for entrepreneurs to register their business online and a call centre was also being established to guide clients.
“I believe with this new software, we are going to totally digitalise our operations, thus a user-friendly system that will enable people to easily register their businesses by themselves,” she added.
The ORC Registrar said the digitalization will eliminate the problem of middlemen, sometimes known as “goro boys,” and lessen the stress people experience when manually registering their businesses at the office.
Madam Oware said the project was funded by the World Bank with a consultant helping with the establishment of the Office.
The ORC will be operating from the premises of the RGD until it gets its own office.
