The Registrar General’s Department (RGD) under the Ministry of Justice has threatened to dissolve all companies that have failed to file their annual returns for more than a decade now.

According to the Registrar General, Mrs Jemima Oware, most businesses have not filed their annual returns for several years running.

“Some big businesses in Ghana have not filed their returns and under the law, I can dissolve them,” she told Joy Business.

“By the end of March this year, I will put out a notice cautioning all businesses that haven’t filed their returns to come do so, failure to do so two months after the notice will result in them being dissolved,” she added.

According to the new Companies Act, 2019 (Act 992), all dissolved companies are to be non-operational for 12 years before re-registration.

Mrs Oware further asserted that, out of the over one million registered businesses in the Department’s database, barely 10 percent of the registered businesses had filed their returns.

A company strike off also referred to as dissolution, is the process by which a limited liability is removed from the register of the Registrar of Companies. The process would effectively mark the company as non-existent for all intents and purposes.