The SECP is a financial regulatory agency and have registered 1392 companies in September 2019 using a new e-Commerce portal that has been greatly effective
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) is a financial regulatory agency that aims to develop a modern and efficient corporate sector and a capital market based on sound authority principles, in order to encourage investment and foster economic growth and prosperity in Pakistan. In a recent set of news, it has been reported that SECPhas registered 1,392 new companies in September 2019, raising the total number of incorporated companies to 105,407.
The eService of the SECP has registered 96% of the companies in the SECP database. As a digital solution, it was necessary to note that 85 foreign applicants had completed their registration overseas as well. This portal has made company registration and post-incorporation compliance much more cost-effective. According to the numbers reported by the SECP, September’s incorporation consisted of 69% private limited and 27% single-member companies. The remaining 4% companies included public unlisted companies, trade organizations, foreign companies, Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) and not for profit associations. In October, 51 new companies with foreign shareholders have been added which includes countries such as China, Denmark, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea South, Malaysia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, UAE, UK, US and Yemen.
One of the major additions was how all registrations were divided according to the sector of the industry. In recent registrations, the trading sector had 239 companies, construction and services with 173 each, information technology with 148, tourism with 79 and real estate development with 54 companies. Moreover, 52 companies were registered in food and beverages, 48 in education, 38 each in engineering and textile, 37 in corporate agricultural farming, 32 in marketing, 24 in transport, 21 in healthcare, and pharmaceutical each, 20 in communication, 17 in logging and 16 companies each from chemical, auto and allied, cosmetics and toiletries, and steel and allied sector were registered.
They have also given an overview on how companies have been divided in terms of per city registration. In particular, September also had the number of companies registered which was 503 in CRO Islamabad. The CROs in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Multan, Faisalabad, Gilgit-Baltistan, Quetta, and Sukkur registered 413, 247, 78, 69, 40, 28, 12 and 2 companies respectively.Companies can also use this method to get registrations with FBR, EOBI and provincial social security, labor department and excise & taxations departments of Punjab and Sindh. This success in online registration highlights the success of digitalization in this age of the country and how more industries should adopt this method.
