The
Business Registration Regulation & Certification Division (BRRC) within the Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) is the sole business registry office in Papua New Guinea.
The BRRD office of IPA has five main public counters for receipting business registration forms which are located
at the 4th Floor of Monian Tower, on Douglas St in down town Port Moresby on the ground floor of IPA Haus corner of Munidubu St and Lawes Rd at Konedobu in NCD.
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more public counters for receipting business registration forms have been set up in the following regions: IPA Lae office for the Momase Region, IPA Buka office for the Bougainville Autonomous region, IPA Mount Hagen office for the Highlands region and recently IPA Rabaul office for the Niugini Islands region .
The main public counters in Port Moresby open from 8:00am till lunch time and open again at 1:00pm till 4:00pm in the afternoon. Counter officers are roistered weekly to man the counters
and so they are open during lunch times as well. The public counters at
Monian Tower the IPA Haus and the other IPA Regional offices are the front section of the Business Registration & Regulation office of IPA where business registration forms are lodged and receipted. After an application is receipted at these counters they are sent to the back office located at
Monian Tower IPA Haus in Port Moresby for screening and processing by companies and non-companies examiners.
For the IPA regional offices, clients may deposit the registration fees at the IPA Westpac account but only at the local provincial branch where the IPA regional office is set up, and then bring back the deposit butt with their business registration forms for receipting at IPA regional office. After receipting the forms are then courier mailed through DHL on to the Business Registration & Regulation back office here in Port Moresby for processing.
Recently in 2007 the IPA upgraded its company registration system (CORE System) to keep up with world standards and to ensure an efficient, effective delivery of service to the general public and the business sector of PNG and the world. With the upgrade, if an application has been completed correctly, it can be processed within several minutes and a certificate of registration is issued.
However, with the tremendous amount of lodgments coming in on a daily basis from within Port Moresby and the other centers in PNG and with the current LNG Project in the FEED stage, the demand in business registration has increased in recent months and that has evidently created a back log in the processing of business registration applications.
So clients are usually advised to allow for at least 10-15 working days, for those in Port Moresby, to receive their registration certificates by mail. For outside centers at least 35 working days should be allowed to receive a certificate since after processing the certificate is mailed back to the clients by snail mail.
However, clients in outside centers of Port Moresby or overseas coming through an agent, who wish to have their certificates dispatched quickly after registration are encouraged to use the services of any of the courier mail companies in PNG such as EMS, TNT or DHL to pick up their certificates and have it delivered to their door step.
Did you find this post helpful? Your feed back is most welcome to ensure that the IPA, a key state agency in promoting investment in PNG, is able to enhance its capacity in service delivery to the general public and meet the demand of business registration and facilitating the business investment of its clients in PNG and abroad.