ISLAMABAD: The Secur­ities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) have launched a one-window facility for company and national tax number (NTN) registration.

The move is part of ‘Doing Business Reforms’ and the one-window facility is based on back-end integration between SECP and FBR systems.

Through this facility, the entrepreneur will login to the SECP online portal eServices, get the company registered with the SECP and will receive the NTN automatically at company’s email address.

SECP Chairman Zafar Abdullah and Member (IT) FBR Khawaja Adnan Zahir jointly inaugurated the system on Wednesday at the SECP’s head office which was attended by senior officials of SECP, FBR, Board of Investment (BOI) and Pakistan Revenue Automation Ltd (PRAL).

The government and relevant authorities expect that the facility is likely to achieve higher ranking in the World Bank’s starting-a-business and the composite doing business indicator.

The facility has been launched to simplify procedures for business registration, eliminate the hassle of visiting various government agencies and to integrate registration procedures of SECP and FBR.

The facility is expected to have favourable implications for investment promotion and documentation of the economy.

Adnan Zahir said that the collaboration between FBR and SECP to provide a conducive environment for doing business in Pakistan was the first instance of the government-to-government technical integration at the process level.

“The creation of a cross-institution single process of registration of a company is the first step, and efforts should be continued to include more organisations. A lot more can be achieved if the government bodies worked in such close coordination,” he said at the launch.

Zafar Abdullah said that SECP has undertaken several reform measures, which have resulted in a robust corporate growth in the country, leading to formalisation of the business sector and documentation of economy.

Executive Director General, BoI, Fareena Mazhar lauded SECP’s and FBR’s efforts for these reforms and stressed that these would not only help local entrepreneurs, but would also serve as an attraction for foreign investors.

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2018