Online transactions increase by 374%

The Registrar General’s Department (RGD) says it has successfully implemented the online registration of companies, as well as the authorization of operations of businesses.

These functions are supported by a number of services online, including the e-Shop, which allows company searches, reservation of company names and the booking of marriage ceremonies, among others.

This has resulted in significant uptake by Ghanaian businesses using the paperless system.

By the first half of the year, over 6,855 online transactions were conducted via the Registrar-General’s Department portal.

Also, there has been substantial growth in annual online transaction numbers from a mere 102 in 2015, to around 3,000 in 2016 to over 11,015 from January to September 2017.

There has been over 60,000 businesses and companies registered with RGD from January to September this year, compared to a figure for the whole of 2016 of 54,000.

Revenue generated by September 2017 at GHC44 million already matches that collected from January to December 2016.

Head of IT at the Registrar-Generals Department, Doris Ampadu-Ameyaw, explained that businesses can conduct their end-to-end business registration on the RGD portal, resulting in the issuance of an e-Certificate.

“Linked to the RGD portal is a fully functional e-payment platform which allows payments to be made in the course of online transactions. This is in line with government’s commitment to leveraging technology to improve the ease of doing business in Ghana and to enhance the business competitiveness of the country,” she said.

According to Mrs Ampadu-Ameyaw, an interesting new feature introduced to the automation of the RGD processes is the deployment of the e-shop information platform, which facilitates the search or requests for data regarding companies registered in Ghana.

She hinted that in line with the commitment to enhance and enrich customer experience, her outfit was in the process of implementing a queue management system at the front office to improve the customer experience.

This, she said, will give true meaning to the ease of doing business

.

The e-Certificate and e-Shop platforms are end-to-end registration portals developed and deployed by GCNet as part of the broad World Bank sponsored e-Gov project.

It leverages ICT opportunities to generate employment enhancement and growth under the e-Gov application for the Revenue Generating Agencies and the Registrar General’s Department.

The data exchange is to encourage a paperless registration and tax regime aimed at significantly reducing administrative and operational overhead costs.

It will greatly ease doing business, while maximising revenue mobilisation for accelerated development.

The e-Certificate is expected be launched today.