Progress being made in CAIPO “refashioning” 

Government officials have admitted there is still a lot of work to be done to modernise the Corporate Affairs and Intellectual Property Office (CAIPO) and make it easier to do business with that state agency, but say progress is being made.

Minister of Energy and Business Development Senator Lisa Cummins reported on Friday that phase one and the first part of phase two of a “complete refashioning of CAIPO” have been completed.

However, she said officials were in the process of designing “phase 2B” and were also examining what the planned restructuring of that organisation would look like.

“We are presently at the space where we are looking at the restructuring of the institution itself – should CAIPO remain as it is constructed with the corporate sector registration along with the intellectual property all in one with limited resources, or should we restructure it? That is an exercise that is actively underway as we speak,” said Cummins.

“So, while we acknowledge there is still work to be done, and we are committed to completing that work, a considerable body of work has been done so far.

“What I can say is that Ernst and Young has worked with that office to be able to ensure that we are at the stage where digitalisation has taken place substantially in a number of critical areas to get it to the place where it is,” she added.

Cummins was responding to questions from parliamentary colleagues on day three of the debate on the 2023/2024 Estimates of Expenditure and Revenue.

Acting Registrar of CAIPO Tamiesha Rochester reminded that phase one of the digital corporate registry, which included the digitalisation of processes required to start a business, went live in November 2021. Phase 2A, which deals with post-incorporation filings, went live a year later.

“Since we have gone live, we have processed 7, 424 applications and these include 1, 316 applications for incorporations of new companies and 1, 668 applications for the registration of business names,” reported Rochester.

“We can say that we have maintained a rate of 80 to 85 per cent of these being processed on the same day or next business day.”

Rochester added that CAIPO continues to address kinks associated with the new technology systems.

“We are also looking at the IT infrastructure upon which the system sits because the system is as strong as its IT infrastructure and the supporting IT applications that feed into the system that allow us to use it,” she said.

Rochester noted that CAIPO, which was set up in 1985 first as a registry, has had to evolve over the years to also become a regulator tasked with monitoring and regulating businesses with revenue under $1 million.

There are currently some 31, 000 companies that fall within this category, about 25, 500 of which have been reviewed and assessed by CAIPO to date, Rochester disclosed.

“We have now been to a place where 82 per cent of the register has passed through a regulatory cycle. It means, therefore, that the office needs to accommodate these growing functions, needs to be able to effectively continue to do what it has been doing [while] taking into account that it has been tasked with these other functions. That is why having considered these factors, the thought of restructuring the office so that it meets the requirements of business in 2023 [is] now on the table,” she explained.

Minister Cummins also noted that officials were working closely with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to “refashion” the National Task Force on Trade and Business Facilitation.

“Within the National Task Force on Trade and Business Facilitation are agencies that have separately been doing a substantial body of work,” she said while pointing to the establishment of the ASYCUDA World in the Customs Department, the implementation of the Maritime Single Window and the ongoing Port Community System.

“One project we are actively now exploring in this ministry is looking at regulatory technology so that we are able to deal with all the regulatory agencies and ensure that technology platforms would be paired with our entrepreneurial capacity.”

Meanwhile, Chief Economist of Research and Planning in the Business Division of the Ministry of Energy and Business Development, Katrina Bradshaw said officials were hoping that a number of longstanding issues would be addressed with the restructuring of the National Task Force on Trade and Business Facilitation.

“For example, we will be seeking to get assistance in streamlining how risk management for clearance and imported goods is currently conducted. We understand that time is money and the impact that these delays on clearance of goods can have on businesses.

“Where possible, we will seek to reduce the level of manual and physical inspections and various points, and transition to a more risk-tolerant approach to inspections, making the process more efficient and effective while making it less time consuming for our importers and traders,” said Bradshaw. (MM)