A technical glitch in business registration and company record services at the Attorney-General’s office has entered a second week, dealing a blow to thousands of users.
The Business Registration Service (BRS) on March 3 suspended services to allow migration to the improved system in an exercise that was expected to conclude by 6am on March 6 when normal services were to resume.
But by yesterday, some of the services had not been restored, eight days past the set deadline.
BRS Director-General Kenneth Gathuma yesterday confirmed that applications on company searches, commonly referred to as CR12 had not been restored.
“As a priority, we anticipate to resolve the issue on official search (CR12) applications under review today, as our technical team actively works to on-board all the remaining services,” he said in a statement.
The migration is part of the agency’s plan to fully digitise its services by the financial year 2025/26 to enhance efficiency and also seal revenue leakages by reducing contact of its workers with individuals and firms seeking services.
BRS, which hosts some of the services on the eCitizen portal, has successfully migrated numerous services to the new system — including registration of a business name and registration of public companies, foreign companies, companies limited by guarantee, and partnerships.
Technical hitches have, however, delayed the migration of some key services onto the new system for several days, which has inconvenienced individuals and firms seeking the services.
The services that are yet to be restored include the registration of private companies and official search for beneficial ownership of companies (CR12).
BRS, which is domiciled at the State Law Office, offers numerous critical services that facilitate the registration and operation of businesses and is key to Kenya’s efforts to ease the cost of doing business.
BRS registered some 73,183 entities in the financial year to June last year, including 50,876 business names, 34,697 private firms, and 50 public companies. It also registered 100 foreign companies, 251 companies limited by guarantee and 278 limited liability partnerships. In the first half of the financial year 2022/23, the BRS struck off 1,068 entities from the registry.
The agency also runs the movable properties securities rights registry where lenders register their security rights on collateral.
Increased demand for loans saw the registry record a 34 percent increase in initial notices filed by financiers between July and December last year compared to the same period in the previous year. BY DAILY NATION