Cape Town - Members of Parliament and the Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies yesterday praised the significant progress made by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) in reducing the backlog in company registrations and name reservations.
A presentation yesterday by the commission to the National Assembly's trade and industry portfolio committee revealed that by the end of last month, the backlog for CC registrations had been brought down from 52 669 to 61 applications outstanding, for co-operatives from 3 954 to four applications and name reservations from 64 408 to 308, while company changes were moved from 60 572 to 1 189.
Added to this, the number of company changes had been reduced from 60 572 to 1 189, while CC changes had been brought down from 55 231 to 1 244 and company registrations from 19 447 to 3 906 by the end of August.
Briefing the committee, Davies said the commission had made "considerable progress" in addressing the short-term challenges, but pointed out that the commission still needed to implement a series of longer-term improvements such as setting competitiveness targets.
This would include ensuring that companies and co-operatives were registered within time periods comparable to international standards, he said, adding that in Zambia, turnaround time for company registrations is measured in hours and not days.
"We ... are looking to the Companies Commission to featuring in competitiveness reports as something that is a positive for our economy and off the main pages of our newspapers, if I can put it that way, because there are problems with the organisation, and I think we are at the beginning of moving into that space," he said.
He said the commission's presentation had also vindicated the department's decision to set up and replace Cipro - an agency he described as being in a crisis when he took over the reins of the department in 2009 - with the CIPC.
Tim Harris, a committee member from the DA, commended the commission for the reduction in the backlog, but said the percentage of calls answered by the commission - 45% last month - was still unacceptable.
This was despite the commission having increased the number of calls answered - from just 28% of calls answered in May.
The backlog in email queries, however, had been more greatly reduced, from 14 960 to 1 400.
In answer to a question from Harris over whether security had been compromised in any way with the pace at which the backlog was handled, Davies said the department was adopting a zero-tolerance approach. He said there had been a few cases of this already, in one where someone had appealed, he had "flatly" rejected the appeal.
CIPC commissioner Astrid Ludin, accompanied by a team of officials from the commission, said staff had been re-allocated and additional staff appointed, an incentive scheme introduced and the organisation kept working until 7pm in a bid to clear the backlog by end of August.
The commission had also received assistance from the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) and had sourced data capturers and re-considered the lay out of the call centre.
Davies had also met with all the teams and staff, which had helped boost morale, said Ludin.
She, however, acknowledged that there were many capturing errors, as staff had been under pressure to get through the backlog, but she said that this would be corrected.
Ludin said the commission wanted to retain its one-day turnaround in name registrations and two-day turnaround time for co-operatives.
Next month, the commission will launch a digital registration process, which Ludin believed should take the pressure off manual registrations.
The digital process will allow for lodgements to be placed online which Ludin said would speed up the process to make a registration, however those registering a company or co-operative would still need to deliver the physical documents for verification.
The commission will also soon be outsourcing the call centre, and would be finalising this decision in the next two weeks, said Ludin.
The CIPC presently has 34 call centre agents and the department has allocated nine more agents.
The commission still has 56 vacancies and 22 vacancies in the call centre. - BuaNews
