ISLAMABAD, Sept 9: The registrars of companies will henceforth be required to dispose of the cases of companies within definite periods of time under the new Companies (Registration Offices) Regulation, 2003, enacted by the Securities and Commission of Pakistan here on Tuesday.

The new enactment replaces the Companies (Registration Offices) Regulation, 1986.

The objective, the SECP spokesman stated, was to improve the document management, boost efficient internal working of the Commission’s Company Registration Offices (CRO) and eradicate unnecessary manual work.

This would especially facilitate reduction of the number of registers and their re-designing based on the information technology solutions and the automation already adopted by the SECP.

It is envisaged that the new regulations would facilitate the corporate entities in timely compliance with the statutory requirement as well as the CROs in maintaining the companies’ data and a more efficient retrieval of requisite information from the database.

Some of the major reforms introduced under the new dispensation are as under:

“In the past, no time period was prescribed for the registrar concerned to examine, or cause to be examined, the documents in a CRO.

“To inculcate a culture of quick dispensation to the corporate entities, the 2003 regulations have defined the quickest possible time in which the registrar would examine the documents or applications and, in case of delay, the reasons and circumstances causing the delay shall be recorded.

“However, certificates of commencement of business, registration of a foreign company and incorporation of a company shall be issued with a period of two and three days, respectively, while inspection of documents kept by the registrar would be carried out within an hour.

“Under the old regulations, a CRO accepted a document filed after the prescribed period on payment of three times the additional filing fee in addition to normal filing fee without absolving a company of any liability arising out of default.

“To encourage the companies to promptly comply with the statutory requirements, an incentive of less additional filing fee slabs has now been provided. Documents filed with a delay not exceeding 15 days would be charged with an additional fee equal to the usual fee specified for the document in the Sixth Schedule. “In case of documents filed with a delay of 15 days but sooner than 45 days and a delay exceeding 45 days, an additional fee equal to two times and three times the usual, respectively, would be charged.”