50% fee cut to encourage 34m SMEs to formalise – Lady Azinge

The Acting Registrar General of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Lady Azuka Azinge, has said that the Federal Government reviewed the fee for business registration downward by 50 per cent to encourage Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to formalise their businesses.

She said this when the management of Daily Trust Newspaper visited her in the CAC headquarters in Abuja yesterday.

Represented by the Commission’s Director of Registry, Mr Abdul Hakeem Mohammed, Lady Azinge said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) estimated that about 34 million SMEs operate in the informal sector of the economy and the fee reduction was targeted at enrolling them into the formal sector of the economy.

She said the reduction, which was a part of the Commission’s Business Incentive Strategy (BIS), brought down the fee for business registration from N10, 000 to N5,000 to encourage more SMEs to give their businesses formal identities.

The CAC boss said the incentive was meant to last for the last quarter of 2018 but popular demand led to an extension to March 31, 2019.

She urged SMEs that are yet to take advantage of the incentive window to register their business names before the deadline.

The Head of Public Affairs Department of CAC, Mr. Godfrey Ike, commended Daily Trust for being professional and setting the pace for journalism practice in Nigeria.