It is said that PEOPLE are the greatest resource that a nation can have, and its the business activities and innovations of especially the local people that eventually lead to a country’s attaining the much desired development.
The trend and number of Zambians forming and registering companies has continued to show considerable improvement. It is the locals innovativeness and business vehicles such as number of registered companies and their success rate that will eventually lead to improved exports earnings as well as industrialization.
According to information obtained by the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, the Patents and Companies Registration Agency (PACRA) says it has registered over 25,000 businesses which include 15,435 business names, 67 foreign companies as well as 9,893 local companies from January this year to the 17 of November, 2020.
PACRA Public Relations Officer Vaida Njovu said the agency is hopeful that it will be able to register at least 28,000 businesses before the end of the year in order to beat last year’s total number of registered businesses which is 28,000.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Njovu said over 68,900 businesses have complied with the legal requirement of filing annul returns which is almost double the number of businesses that filed annual returns in 2019.
Njovu said this increase can be attributed to the availability of the online system which makes it easy for businesses to file their annual returns as it has made services easily accessible even for individuals in remote parts of the country.
She added that the agency has continued to send reminders to businesses whose annual returns are due and is also very interactive through its various media platforms in an effort to increase compliance levels from its clients.
She also said that no businesses were de-registered by PACRA unless voluntarily, this is on request from the owners who applied to have their businesses deregistered for various reasons.
Njovu explained that the agency does not thrive on de-registering businesses but rather on seeing more being opened up, growing and contributing to the economic development therefore it focuses more on measures that will help keep the businesses running.
She added that the filing of annual returns is very critical for a business because other than it being a legal requirement, it shows the status of a business at that particular time of filing and the public also relies on the information that is on PACRA’s system.
“For example Zambia Development Agency (ZDA) wants to know how many businesses are registered in the aqua culture, they might ask for our data base so we will give it to them as is sitting on our registry, so if a business has changed their address and did not inform PACRA, they may end up losing out on certain incentives or critical communication that may be offered by government or other industry players, she said.”
