By Cheranka Mendis – DailyMirror
The Government yesterday announced that all assets belonging to companies that are not registered under the new Companies Act No. 07 of 2007, will be taken over the by the government from 15th of this month. Minister of Trade, Marketing Development, Corporative and Consumer Affairs Bandula Gunawardena made this announcement yesterday.
“A particular time period has been given for the re-registration of companies under Act No. 7 of 2007. The companies also get an extended time period of 6 months after the given time frame. However this time period comes to an end by this Thursday (October 15) after which all assets of those companies still unregistered will legally come into the hands of the government,” the Minister said.
He said that the ministry has taken steps to remind over 2,000 companies that have not re-registered under the new Companies Act and that ministry has incurred a sum of Rs. 26 million for notifications in newspapers. “Whether it is ignorance, or forgetfulness all assets, including property, vehicles, movable and immovable property will be taken over by the government,” Minister said. According to the minister all the companies that fail to re-register after the dead line would be omitted from the registry.
“After the given time expires the Company Registrar has no legal authority to pass or include the companies name in to the list,” said Registrar General of Companies, D. K. Hettiarachchi. “Mere registering is not enough,” said Mr. Hettiarachchi, “all companies must also take note to submit all annual reports, company accounts etc each year to the Registrar”. The Minister stated that the main objective of incorporating the new Companies act in 2007 was to clearly identify the active and the inactive companies in the country. “Under the Companies Act of 1938 which existed prior to the 2007 Act, there was no specification which enabled the Department of Register Companies to note the active and the inactive companies from the registered list. Therefore the 2007 Act was incorporated”. The total number of companies incorporated prior to the Companies Act of 2007, i.e. from 1938 to May 2005 is said to be 66,496. The total number of companies incorporated under Companies Act of 2007 from May 2007 to September 2009 was said to be 10,528. In 2007 a total of 2,963 companies have registered, while 4532 have been registered in the following year. Statistics for 2009 (January 1 to September 30) implies that 3,033 companies have registered in total, which includes 2,724 private companies, 184 public companies, 20 Guarantee Limited, 85 Guarantee associations, 1 off shore company and 19 foreign companies. 713 applications have been received for registration under the 2007 act for this year. Number of certificates issued is said to be 17,862 while 7,086 applications have been processed. A sum of Rs. 90, 283, 584 has been generated as income till the financial year ended September for this year of the Department of Registrar of Companies while the expenditure is recorded to be Rs. 72, 372, 098.