ISLAMABAD: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has registered 2,192 new companies during first half (July-December) of current fiscal year as compare to 1,950 companies registered during the same period last year, reflecting growth of 12 per cent in new incorporation.
The SECP incorporated 469 companies in only in December 2014. The new incorporation includes two foreign companies and 41 local companies with foreign investment.
The growth in corporate registration indicates a very healthy trend and a significant shift towards documentation of the economy. It is also a sign of favourable economic policies of the government for corporate. Services, information technology, construction, communication and power generation sectors have shown decent growth, reflecting the measures taken by the government for the development of these sectors.
During this period, around 90 percent companies were registered as private limited companies, 6 percent companies were registered as single member companies and three percent of the companies were registered as public unlisted, associations’ not-for-profit, trade organisations and foreign companies. The services sector took the lead in new incorporations with registration of 281 companies, followed by trading with 250, tourism with 197, information technology with 192, construction with 148, corporate agricultural farming with 79, food and beverages with 64, communication and education with 61 each and oil and gas with 58 companies. During this period, 17 foreign companies were also registered at the Company Registration Offices (CROs) in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore.
Foreign investment was also witnessed in 248 new companies from diverse sectors. These companies have foreign investors from Australia, Afghanistan, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritius, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Turkey, UAE, UK and the US.
The highest numbers of companies, i.e. 741, were registered at the Lahore CRO, followed by 585 and 547 companies registered at CROs in Islamabad and Karachi respectively. The CROs in Multan, Peshawar, Faisalabad, Quetta and Sukkur registered 108, 97, 79, 23 and 12 companies respectively. During the first half of the current fiscal year, the SECP has accepted the requests from 337 companies for an overall increase of Rs202 billion in their authorised capital. In addition, 464 companies filed returns for increase in the paid-up capital with the total increment amounting Rs55 billion.
