No fewer than 245,000 Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, SMEs, businesses across Nigeria get free registration by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
CAC established by the Companies and Allied Matters Act, was promulgated in 1990 to regulate the formation and management of companies in Nigeria.
iBrandTV gathered that the Federal Government has approved the free registration of 250,000 business names as part of its intervention to assuage the economic effect of COVID-19.
While speaking on the development, CAC’s Registrar-General, Alhaji Garba Abubakar, noted that it did registration with the approval of the Federal Government.
According to him, the Federal Government paid 50 per cent of the cost of registration to CAC and more than 245,000 business names were consequently registered.
Abubakar explained that the process was electronic and applicants also got their certificates electronically.
He added that the numbers were divided between the 36 states of the federation and the FCT noting that Lagos, Abia and Kano States had the largest numbers.
He said free registration of 6, 606 business names was approved for 33 states while Abia, Lagos and Kano States would have 7, 906, 9,084 and 8,406 respectively.
Abubakar noted that aggregators were appointed and paid to collect SMEs information and submit same to CAC.
He explained that the commission provided special access for the aggregators for effective service delivery since they were responsible for scanning and uploading of documents.
He added that CAC had to take over from one of the aggregators appointed for two states but failed to deliver.
Abubakar said also that the intervention of CAC and appointment of substitute aggregators to take over in the two states sped up the process, already nearing completion.
“We are hoping that by end of September the exercise will come to an end,’’ he said.