The Registrar General, Jemima Oware has said that as of January 2022, only the National Identification Authority card will be accepted for the registration of businesses in the country.

According to her, all other requirements such as the Tax Identification Number (TIN) from Ghana Revenue Authority will no longer be of use.

Speaking on PM Express on Thursday, Mrs Oware stated that the registration system is being upgraded to take up the NIA cards based on the government’s directive.

“From January of next year, it is just going to be the NIA card. Our system speaks with other institutions such as the Ghana Post and the National Identification Authority to identify people in our system.”

The Registrar General stated that the 17 processes one ought to undergo before a business is registered, have been reduced to three.

This, according to her, is due to the merging of forms and processes with other institutions.

“Most of the agencies that have anything to do with business registration, have been linked up with us electronically. For instance, our system speaks to Ghana Revenue Authority's system to generate the TIN. Our systems are going to be speaking to National Identification Authority system to identify.”

Mrs Oware said a major challenge that the Registrar General's Department faces, which affects business registration, is the outbreak of Covid-19 in Ghana.

“Covid was a challenge, it caused us to lose so much  revenue, it caused us to change our way of doing business entirely because we had to run a shift with the staff. But what that meant was that the general public can’t be expecting the same kind of service because our staff had been reduced. So I think most businesses also suffered, things went down considerably. So I think that was challenging,” she said.

She also noted that the lack of the NIA card from applicants also slowed down the pace of business registration.

“Now, there are more requirements. For instance, everybody now needs a National Identification Authority card and that is affecting the rate at which businesses are being registered. We didn’t realize it but most people didn’t have an NIA card.”

She, however, stated that business is picking up as more people acquire the NIA card.