President Cyril Ramaphosa said entrepreneurs have been able to register their companies at just the “click of a button” thanks to government’s Biz Portal.
Ramaphosa was delivering his State of the Nation Address (SONA) yesterday before a hybrid joint sitting of the National Assembly and National Council of Provinces, when he noted uptake in the use of the company registration online platform.
The president said: “In the past year, more than 125 000 new companies have been registered through the Biz Portal platform, completing their registration in just a matter of hours from the comfort of their homes or offices.
“We have worked to facilitate investment by increasing the ease of doing business, including by making it easier to start a business. This is one area that had slipped backwards and we’ve been doing quite a lot of work to ensure the ease of doing business is boosted, so that investors and business people can easily come to our country, set up companies and start business.”
Established in November 2019, the Biz Portal was developed by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC), an agency of the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition.
It is a digital platform that houses all business-related services from various public entities in the country.
According to CIPC, the Biz Portal was developed in response to the quest of improving the ease of doing business in SA, specifically, starting a business.
Through the platform, entrepreneurs are able to register a business within a day, which, according to government, is a dramatic improvement on turnaround times of 40 days recorded by the World Bank 2020 Ease of Doing Business Report.
Other collaborative partners include SARS, the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Compensation Fund, and CIPC, which have made it possible for applicants of private firms to obtain key business services, such as company registration, tax registration number, domain name registration, B-BBEE certificate, compensation fund registration, unemployment insurance fund registration, as well as a business bank account.
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