The Office of Registrar of Com­panies (ORC) has directed all com­panies and entities to file their annual returns with the office latest by December 31 or risk being struck off from the companies' register.

The directive forms part of the ORC’s move to maintain accurate and reliable data on companies in the country and to delete dormant and defaulting ones in the register in accordance with the Companies Act 2019(Act 992).

According to the ORC, there were more than 110,000 dormant and defaulting companies on their Register which had not filed any annual returns over the past five years after their incorporation.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghanaian Times in Accra last week, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) for the ORC, Nicholas Ofori Obeng-Twum, indicated that the clean-up exercise which had entered the second phase would see 2,584 companies and businesses put in state of inactive and eventually struck off begin­ning from January 2023.

“These dormant and defaulting Companies designated as inactive cannot be electronically searched on in the registrar system and technically connotes that they don’t exist," he said.

Mr Obeng-Twum mentioned companies and entities both pri­vate and Limited by Shares, and by Guarantee as Schools, Churches, Associations, Fun Clubs, NGO’s Foreign/Domestic, Foundations, Civil Society Groups (CSOs), Councils, and Charity Groups.

Sanctions, according to the PRO, the Companies Act 2019 (Act 992), Section 289 (5) implies that “a company can be struck off the register if it fails to file its annual returns on time or fails to notify the Registrar of Companies of a change in its registered of­fice or principal place of business in a timely manner”.

Meanwhile, the ORC has directed all companies to file the appropriate ‘Suffix or Ending’ for their Companies and adopt a ‘Constitution’ to replace the ‘Regulation’ in accordance with Section 24,25,27 and 301 of the Companies Act 2019 (Act 992) by end December 2022.

The filing of change of name is necessary to help differentiate between Public and Private Com­panies to halt private companies taking in Public funds and forstall public deceptions and for easy identification of the type of Com­pany and entity they are.

He advised the public to be vigilant against fraudsters parad­ing themselves as officers of the ORC and directing people to send momo or risk being ‘cancelled’ from the companies register.