Registering Your PNG Company Through The Online PNG Register

UPDATE: At 2 P.M. on 19 February 2014, the PNG Government  passed the bill in parliament on legislative amendments to the Business Names Act 1963 and the Companies Act 1997 which therefore now allows for online filing of business names and local company registrations .  These features will be available soon on the IPA website.  The amended legislation are now referred to respectively as the Business Names Act 2014 and the Companies Act 2014.

For those of you trying to file a new local company application through the online PNG Companies Register you will have realised that this feature is not yet available.

It has been disabled purposely because there are pending amendments that have yet to be passed providing for online filing of local company applications without the need to submit consent forms as in the current practice under the current Companies Act 1997.

So for now you still have to file your application through paper or email to the PNG Companies Office.  But the good thing with this new PNG Companies Register is that once you have registered your local company and have received a certificate of incorporation, you can then proceed to claim authority over your company on the online PNG Companies Register so that you can then maintain and update your company details directly online.

1. Register a user account on the PNG Companies Register website.  Click on the Do It Online tab and select Register Account to create your user account.
2. Log on with your user account, click on Do It Online and select search a company to confirm that the proposed name you intend to use does not appear in the search result. If it does appear among the search results then it is not available for you to register as the name has already been taken. Note that even slight variations of your proposed name may appear in the search result and if you do try to reserve your own proposed although it may be slightly varied from the name in the search result it may not be accepted on the grounds of name similarities. Doing a search on your proposed name on the online PNG Companies Register ensures that when you do file your application through paper there won’t be any delays with registration just because the name you want is already taken.
3. Download a local company application from here to complete .  Refer to this guide to correctly complete the form.
4. Submit your application to PNG Companies Office through post or hand deliver to:  The Registrar of Companies, PNG Companies Office, Investment Promotion Authority, Ground Floor, IPA Haus, Corner Munidubu Street & Lawes Road Konedobu National Capital District; PO Box 1281 Port Moresby, NCD, Papua New Guinea.
5. You may even file your application through email with evidence of your payment to online[earth]ipa[dot]gov[dot]pg.  Filing your application through email assumes that you have subscribed to your local bank’s internet banking service. Bank South Pacific, Westpac and ANZ Bank provide internet banking services to their customers so you might want to consider applying for this service just so you can file your application for a new local company through email.

The IPA accepts payments for local company applications in the following manner:

•  Bank cheques made payable to the “Registrar of Companies”.  Personal or company cheques are not acceptable.

• Cash deposits strictly using IPA Deposit Slips available at Bank South Pacific, Westpac Bank and ANZ Bank. Confirm with your local bank if they have any IPA Deposit Slips in stock.  Otherwise pick one up from the public counter at the Ground Floor of IPA Haus at Konedobu in Port Moresby or at your local IPA regional offices located in Buka, Lae, Mt Hagen and Kokopo. IPA recently signed an MOU with Post PNG so IPA deposit slips should also be available at your local Post PNG offices in the following towns/cities in PNG:
• Lorengau, Manus Province;
• Kavieng, New Ireland Province;
• Kimbe, West New Britain Province;
• Tabubil, Western Province;
• Alotau, Milne Bay Province;
• Kiunga, Western Province.

• ETPOS facilities available only at the public counters located on the ground floor of IPA Haus at Konedobu.  Your local IPA regional offices do not have ETPOS facilities installed so you will have to use IPA deposit slips or internet banking instead.

• Internet Banking.  You can make internet banking payments for your local company application into the IPA ANZ account, Port Moresby branch.  The IPA ANZ account number is 1150909 and the BSB number for the ANZ Port Moresby branch is 018-900.  Ensure that when you email your local company application that you enclose your internet banking transaction statement with it.  Once your transaction statement is received it will be forwarded to the finance unit of the IPA to confirm that payment has gone through before it is receipted for processing.

That's it.  If you are still in doubt just email your query to online[earth]ipa[dot]gov[dot]pg.

PS: The above step can also be applied to register a business name.  You can download a business name application from here.