The Vice President, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia has urged staff and management of the Registrar General’s Department to intensify their stakeholder engagement programs through the use of all available channels including print and social media to build consensus in order to enhance operations and boost revenue collection.
He said management should brainstorm and adopt other innovative revenue enhancing strategies to raise the level of compliance and transparency in the Ghanaian business registration system.
The Vice President was speaking at the launch of the E-Certificate and E-Payment on the online portal of the Registrar General’s department in Accra yesterday.
He revealed that E-certificate and the E-payment systems mark the culmination of a lot of hard work in the reform of its processes, adding that the objective of these reforms is to put in place an appropriate Business Registration and Filing regime.
He mentioned that the reforms are also intended to lead to a reduction in the time and cost of registering businesses, provision of customer friendly business registration services and, finally putting measures in place for Business Registration and Filing services to be accessible to all businesses in and outside Ghana.
“This means that anyone interested in starting a business in Ghana from a place like Bunkpurugu, Sefwi Wiawso or a country like Japan can do so from their computer in Japan,” he said.
“If you have access to the internet, you can go online and register your business and receive your electronic certificate of incorporation within 2 days or more likely within one day. At the same time you will also receive an electronic commencement certificate,” he added.
According to the Vice President, government wants to formalize the economy using the National ID Card, the National Digital Addressing System and financial inclusion which will impact positively on the economy.
“With the registration of businesses, the addressing system will be used for the registration of citizens and non-citizens living in Ghana by the National Identification Authority” he said
He said this will make it easy for the Registrar General’s Department to have ID numbers linked to traceable addresses for the ease of identifying the residential addresses of business owners and the location of their businesses, stressing that financial inclusion with interoperability will bring more unbanked Ghanaians into the banking sector.
Dr. Bawumia also enumerated that President Akufo-Addo’s vision is to make Ghana the most business friendly nation in Africa and that that dream starts with the Registrar General’s Department.
He asked the Acting Registrar General to improve the turnaround time for business registration and speed up the process of going online with business registration.
The online payment system, he indicated was fixed after his visit in March this year.
“I have asked the Acting Registrar General to work on automating the Registration of charges and with the new addressing system, we will link Metropolitan Assemblies to the Registrar General’s Department for the ease of obtaining a Business Operating permit,” he urged.
The project is an initiative of the Public, Private, and Partnership (PPP) by the Government of Ghana with support from the World Bank with the aim of re-engineering the business processes of the Ghana Revenue Authority and the Registrar General’s Department.