19 Jul 2016

Business registration process in Botswana will soon transform from a semi-paper based to fully electronic based registry.

That stemmed from the signing of a partnership agreement between Botswana and New Zealand for the implementation of the long awaited online registration of companies and business names project.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, Ms Peggy Serame, said the agreement was a significant milestone in the journey towards modernising and refining business registration processes and thereby improving the doing business environment in Botswana.

The online registration system project is partly funded by New Zealand government to the tune of P7 million.

Its scope includes provision of technical assistance for the delivery of a customised electronic business registry system which allows for the online registration of companies and business names.

The online registration system would facilitate provision of an end-to-end customer experience which ensures that customers are able to register their companies from the comfort of their homes or offices online, pay required fees online and receive their certificates of incorporation without going to Companies and Intellectual Property Authority (CIPA) offices.

Ms Serame therefore explained that the simple objective of the project was to achieve faster, cheaper and more accurate business registration processes.

Meanwhile, Ms Serame said the country’s rankings published annually by the World Bank were relatively low, where Botswana is currently ranked 72 for ease of doing business and 143 for starting business out of the 180 countries.

That, she said was due to the current business registration system used in Botswana.

“While this project is a step in the right direction, I wish to urge all implementing agencies such as CIPA and Botswana Unified Revenue Service, and others to develop and implement smarter world class electronic registry solutions that will bring about tangible improvements to the doing business landscape in Botswana and in turn improve our rankings,” she said.

Furthermore, Ms Serame said in order to achieve such, Botswana needed to learn from the best, and align itself with countries which had adopted smarter and more effective technologies such as New Zealand, while the latest Doing Business Report ranks New Zealand number one on the Starting a Business indicator.

Meanwhile, the online registration project was informed by New Zealand Companies Office which carried out assessment of companies and business names registry to determine the status of Botswana registry and identify key areas of support to be offered.ENDS