GoldenNewsNg gathered that the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)has revealed that it has registered 245,000 businesses under its free business name registration scheme so far this year.

This was disclosed by the Registrar-General, Alhaji Garba Abubakar, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Wednesday.

The CAC boss added that the free registrations were done with the approval of the federal government, as part of its interventions to reduce the economic impacts of COVID-19 on Nigerians.

He added that the “Federal Government paid 50 per cent of the cost of registration to CAC and more than 245,000 business names were consequently registered,” citing that the free business registration process so far has been electronic and applicants also got their certificates electronically.

“The numbers were divided between the 36 states of the federation and the FCT,” he said, noting that “Lagos, Abia and Kano States had the largest numbers.”

He disclosed that aggregators were appointed and paid to collect SMEs information and submit the same to CAC.

“The commission provided special access for the aggregators for effective service delivery since they were responsible for scanning and uploading of documents,” he said, citing that the CAC had to take over from one of the aggregators appointed for two states, who failed to deliver.

“We are hoping that by end of September, the exercise will come to an end,’’ he said.

What you should know
Recall VON reported in October 2020 that President Muhamadu Buhari approved free business name registration with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) for 250,000 businesses across the nation.