The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) has registered more than 245,000 Small and Medium Enterprises businesses free of charge since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
The Registrar-General, Alhaji Garba Abubakar, who gave this hint to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday, said that the free registration of the entities was sequel to the approval of the Federal Government.
According to him, the government approved the free registration of 250,000 business names as part of its interventions to mitigate the negative economic effects of COVID-19 pandemic in the country
The Registrar General, who explained that the process was electronic and that applicants also received their certificates of registration electronically, said the government paid 50 percent of the cost of registration to CAC and more than 245,000 business names were consequently registered.
Specifically, Abubakar disclosed that free registration of 6, 606 business names were approved for each of the 33 states while Abia, Lagos and Kano States had approvals for 7, 906, 9,084 and 8,406 respectively.
Abubakar further explained that aggregators were appointed and paid to collect SMEs’ information and submit the same to CAC.
He disclosed that the commission provided special access for the aggregators for effective service delivery since they were responsible for scanning and uploading of documents.
Abubakar pointed out that although some setbacks were experienced in two states on the exercise, he, however, added that with the management’s proactive responses to the hitches, the commission is “hoping that by end of September the exercise will come to an end.’’
