In November 7th last year, the Investment Promotion authority issued a notice to deregister 5000 companies failing to comply and file their annual returns.
The deadline given to companies to issue their returns was January 16th this year, and since it has been a week after, IPA will no longer be accepting annual returns from companies.
Acting Registrar of Companies, Harriet Kokiva, explained the consequences for companies that did not comply.
“First we will change the status from registered to removed. Secondly, they are dead as in they are not allowed to carry on any business in any form.”
“Thirdly, all assets will be now vested upon the registrar of companies. Financial Institutions will also be notified so that if they have any accounts, they will be closed and balances will be transferred to the trust account of the Registrars offices,” the Acting Registrar said.
The first batch of companies listed to deregister totaled to 5,000; 4,724 of those companies being non-compliant.
This also included a total of 202 overseas companies in which only 10 companies complied.
The Acting Registrar said that companies would have to pay K3,000 among other fees, to be reinstated.
“They can contact us quickly on companies@IPA.gov.pg, if they think their company were removed in error,”
“They can also apply administratively. The admin fee is K3000, on top of their annual returns. Their usual fee of K300 per return, and K1,000 late penalty fee”, the Acting Registrar explained.
The Acting Registrar said that companies would be manually registered, but monitoring those companies compliance, will be done electronically.
“It is a manually done registration, were there is human intervention,” she said.
“When the automatic compliance is switched on, it is the Computer system that monitors it. The only language it will understand is that the company has not filed an annual return,” The Acting Registrar explained.
This exercise hopes to be a warning to other non-compliant companies, to file their outstanding annual returns to avoid being deregistered.
This is the first batch of non-compliant companies; the second batch of non-compliant companies will be released towards the end of March.
By Benjamin Manimbi – Cadet Reporter – EMTV News – Port Moresby
