Cabinet stalls Companies’ Code

By Kofi Ahovi The long anticipated revision of the Companies’ Code (Act 179) of 1963 has been stalled at cabinet. The code was presented to cabinet for the second time in August last year after it was returned to enable more consultation with stakeholders. Speaking to the Deputy Minister of Justice and Attorney General Department, Ebow Barten Oduro, he said “Cabinet is working on it and the document is voluminous, this explains why it’s taking that long”. The code which regulates the registration of various types of business in the country was enacted in 1963 and has never been reviewed, despite changing trends in business registrations and operating structures worldwide. Cabinet returned the revised document to the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General’s Department after it found certain portions of the document to be inconsistent with both the constitution and certain international treaties Ghana is signatory to. To resolve this, the ministry held a consultative meeting with stakeholders in Koforidua, Eastern Region to rectify the inconsistencies and the document has since been submitted to cabinet for consent. The draft document was first presented to cabinet early 2009 for scrutiny and eventual approval. The document when approved would be presented to the Ministry of Justice then to parliament for consideration. The draft of the comprehensive review of the Companies’ Code was completed by a committee headed by a High Court judge and was subsequently reviewed by the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General’s Department. When passed into law, the reviewed code will among other things encourage the enforcement of the law that requires the regular renewal of business names and the filing of annual returns, and stiffer punishments for not meeting the tenets of the code being proposed. The then Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Betty Mould-Iddrisu, agreed that the review of one of Ghana’s most important, yet outdated business laws was long overdue and should not wait further. The review process started during the erstwhile John Agyekum Kufuor administration. Provisions were also proposed for business registration numbers issued by the Registrar General’s Department to correspond with a company’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) number to improve the tax collection system. Currently, the department reviews, on average, about 100 business registration applications daily and about 2,000 monthly.