“Steady” rise in new business registration

Acting Registrar of the Corporate Affairs and Intellectual Property Office (CAIPO) Tamiesha Rochester is reporting a steady increase in the number of individuals registering businesses in Barbados.

Pointing out that the COVID-19 pandemic had forced a number of individuals to become entrepreneurs, she said CAIPO was pleased to see that more Barbadians were ensuring they have those businesses registered.

“We have found that recently, especially since COVID, a lot of persons are turning to entrepreneurship and registering their own businesses, so that has resulted in an increase in the filings and applications that we have here at the office,” she said.

Rochester was not in a position to immediately say what the increase was in terms of actual numbers or percentage of registrations when compared to the previous year. However, she said it was a “steady” rise.

Up to 2017, it was estimated that Barbados had close to 10 000 registered small businesses.

“We have seen an increase certainly since the onset of COVID. A lot of persons would have been out of work and a lot of places shut. So we find then that persons are seeking alternative methods to get an income,” she said.

“It is very important that we continue to facilitate and encourage persons to be self-sufficient to be able to generate that income to have the options for supporting themselves and their families and contributing economically to society,”
Rochester added.

The CAIPO official was speaking on the sidelines of a training session for staff on the new corporate digital registry being introduced as part of a wider digitalization project for the department.

Rochester said she was also satisfied that Barbadians were showing an increased interest in securing their intellectual property, pointing out that this was an area that CAIPO continued to take seriously and it was therefore providing several digital upgrades.

“In fact, what I can mention here is that while we are engaged in this project for the corporate registry side of the office, we are actually improving our system in the intellectual property office. That is called the Industrial Property Automation System (IPAS), provided to us by the World Intellectual Property Office. So while this is ongoing we have a team working in some technical [areas], basically preparing the system for the upgrade to the next version,” she explained. (MM)