Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at, Guyana–Com­pa­ny reg­istries with­in the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME) are set to go on­line this year.

This de­vel­op­ment stems from an on­go­ing project fund­ed by the 10th Eu­ro­pean De­vel­op­ment Fund to cre­ate an on­line re­gion­al reg­istry of com­pa­nies. This will serve as a cen­tral repos­i­to­ry of in­for­ma­tion on com­pa­nies and oth­er le­gal en­ti­ties es­tab­lished in the CSME. The move should ad­dress some chal­lenges re­lat­ed to the Right of Es­tab­lish­ment regime with­in the CSME.

This re­gion­al reg­istry would fa­cil­i­tate in­for­ma­tion ex­change and net­work­ing among the na­tion­al com­pa­nies reg­istries and the Sec­re­tari­at. It would al­so func­tion as a por­tal via which per­sons can per­form name search­es, re­serve busi­ness names, and reg­is­ter a com­pa­ny in CSME Mem­ber States.

As part of that project, the com­pa­ny reg­istry in each Mem­ber State will be con­vert­ed to an on­line sys­tem to fa­cil­i­tate par­tic­i­pa­tion in the re­gion­al e-reg­istry. To­day there will be a demon­stra­tion of the na­tion­al reg­istry sys­tem (NRS) via video con­fer­ence to mem­ber states by Case­flow Sys­tems, the project con­sul­tants and de­vel­op­ers of the pro­to­type soft­ware in­for­ma­tion sys­tem.

The demon­stra­tion ses­sion will ex­plain the key fea­tures and func­tions of the sys­tem and in­vite com­ments and rec­om­men­da­tions from mem­ber states. Par­tic­i­pants will com­prise na­tion­al reg­is­trars and oth­er rel­e­vant per­son­nel who are ex­pect­ed to utilise and in­ter­act with the sys­tem.

The NRS will be de­ployed in the 12 mem­ber states over the com­ing months and rel­e­vant users will be able to ac­cess the sys­tem. There will al­so be a demon­stra­tion of the re­gion­al reg­istry sys­tem in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary to mem­ber states to ob­tain feed­back on its func­tions and any pos­si­ble im­prove­ments to the sys­tem be­fore it is de­ployed. This ses­sion will al­so take place in Bar­ba­dos.

This on­line reg­istry with­in the CSME is a vi­tal part of the dri­ve to­ward cre­at­ing a sin­gle ju­ris­dic­tion for com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in the sin­gle mar­ket where­by once reg­is­tered in one par­tic­i­pat­ing mem­ber state, com­pa­nies will be deemed as be­ing reg­is­tered in all. The 12 par­tic­i­pat­ing mem­ber states in­clude An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Guyana, Ja­maica, St Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lu­cia, St Vin­cent & the Grenadines, Suri­name, and T&T.