Registering a company to take one day as AG office goes digital

What you need to know:

The registrar of companies has finalised its digitisation programme in a move that will allow most of its services to be delivered online or through the mobile phone.

Kenya is set to become one of the easiest countries in East Africa to start a business as the State Law Office moves to cut company registration duration to just one day from next month.

Solicitor-General Njee Muturi said the registrar of companies has finalised its digitisation programme in a move that will allow most of its services to be delivered online or through the mobile phone.

“As long as the applicant has a personal identification number, passport-sized photos and Sh800 which can even be paid by M-pesa, registration of a business name will be one-day affair from May,” Mr Muturi told a Press briefing in Nairobi on Wednesday.

Registration of the company name is the lengthiest of the ten procedures that an applicant has to undergo at the moment to start a business in Kenya.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that out of the 32 days that it currently takes to start a business in Kenya, name registration alone takes up to 14 days.

To get to the stage of name registration, an applicant has to wait for three days for name reservation, five days for stamping of the memorandum and articles of association and nominal capital, a day to pay for stamp duty and another day to sign the Declaration of Compliance before a commissioner of oaths or public notary.

READ: New office to take over firms’ registration

With digitised records, the State Law Office hopes to have these procedures finalised in one day. The registration for taxes, obtaining of business permits, registration with the National Social Security Fund and National Hospital Insurance Fund and making company seal — which took another 10 days — will also take one day.

This means that it could take as few as three days to start a business in Kenya, the same level of efficiency that has earned Rwanda top ratings in the IFC’s annual Doing Business Surveys.

It takes only two procedures and three days to start a business in Rwanda. Tanzania has also beaten Kenya in the starting business parameter in the last two years.

The announcement made by Mr Muturi on Wednesday came just four months after the State Law Office signed a Sh14 million deal with mobile service provider Safaricom to enable investors to register companies through their mobile phones.