Urgent need for passage of Companies Bill : To establish beneficial ownership regime

The acting Registrar General, Mrs Jemima Oware, has urged Parliament to consider and pass the revised Companies Bill 2003 into an Act before going on recess in July. 

This will enable the country to have a beneficial ownership regime in place, as part of efforts to help fight corruption. 

 At a follow-up dialogue on a post-London anti-corruption summit and beneficial ownership regime in Ghana, she said commitments at the summit towards having a beneficial ownership regime in place made it necessary for the Bill to be passed into law by September, 2016. 

“We have made some new provisions. It is coming at a late stage but we have to ensure that cross referencing is done After all this is said and done, we have more meetings with the parliamentary select Committee on Legal and Constitutional affairs to look at it, agree to it and have it laid in Parliament and passed before they rise,” she said. 

Although the timing appear to be short, she explained that further delays could have implications for the commitment made and, therefore, appealed to the members of Parliament at the forum to consider the bill before going on recess. 

“We have to realise that we have made commitments. By September, we should have a regime of beneficial ownership in place. Initially, we wanted a separate legislation to handle that but it was made quite clear that the President had gone ahead to commit us and we cannot allow this year to go by without ensuring that the Companies Bill is passed into law with provisions for beneficial ownership,” she said. 

“My dear members of parliament here, majority and minority leaders, you have to make every effort to ensure that this bill becomes an Act, I will do my bit, the rest I leave to you,” she added.

Last stages

According to her, the revision of the existing bill had reached the last stage before the need to make provision for a beneficial ownership regime came about. 

That notwithstanding, the provision to introduce beneficial ownership in the Companies bill she said, had been introduced. 

“I am praying that once they all have a look at it and buy into it, we will be able to implement it and submit it to Parliament before July and have it passed into an act before they rise. That is the challenge we have now,” she said. 

New provision

Per the beneficial ownership provision, every company in Ghana will now have to provide information on who its beneficial owners are, their interests, nationality, residential and postal addresses, their dates of birth, and possibly contact numbers to enable the Registrar-Generals Department to contact them, if need be. 

As part of compelling measures, Mrs Oware said companies which failed to provide information on beneficial ownership would face prescribed sanctions. 

“We need to put in provisions to compel people to provide this information. So we also need to put in penalties, which could be summary conviction, or a fine or both. We were thinking of two years for summary conviction, or a fine of 25 penalty units but we have to look at all that,” she said. 

The dialogue

The Africa Deputy Director of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Mr Emmanuel Kuyole, said President John Dramani Mahama, at a summit on tackling corruption in London in May, committed to putting in measures that would help fight corruption in Ghana. 

He said the dialogue was, therefore, to make sure that those commitments were translated into action and to make sure that the country benefited from it.