No new com­pa­nies have been able to reg­is­ter to legal­ly con­duct busi­ness in this coun­try since last year.

That is be­cause the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry Sys­tem’s “aged servers” crashed since De­cem­ber 9 and have not been up and run­ning since then.

And al­though the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs has ad­mit­ted that the on­go­ing or­deal has caused a great in­con­ve­nience to mem­bers of the pub­lic, the prob­lem is not ex­pect­ed to be fixed for the next two weeks.

The reg­istry is re­spon­si­ble for the In­cor­po­ra­tion of com­pa­nies, un­der the Com­pa­nies Act; the Reg­is­tra­tion of Busi­ness names, un­der the Reg­is­tra­tion of Busi­ness Names Act; the Reg­is­tra­tion of Non-Prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions un­der the Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tions; and the Reg­is­tra­tion of News­pa­pers un­der the News­pa­pers Act.

That means for the last month and a half, no new com­pa­nies would have been able to reg­is­ter to legal­ly con­duct busi­ness in T&T.

It al­so means that no new busi­ness names could be reg­is­tered or claimed.

As a re­sult, any busi­ness­es with the in­ten­tion of start­ing op­er­a­tions since De­cem­ber 9, that had not been reg­is­tered be­fore that date have been left in lim­bo con­cern­ing busi­ness trans­ac­tions or even prop­er­ty pur­chas­es or con­trac­tu­al ne­go­ti­a­tions with oth­er busi­ness en­ti­ties.

How­ev­er, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion does not sole­ly im­pact these new en­ti­ties, as com­pa­nies con­duct­ing prop­er­ty pur­chas­es and ac­qui­si­tions are al­so re­quired to make de­c­la­ra­tions on the com­pa­ny reg­istry.

These trans­ac­tions are al­so left on hold un­til the site can be re­vived.

Ac­cord­ing to the de­scrip­tor of the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry web­site, “The reg­istry has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to its var­i­ous clients and stake­hold­ers to not on­ly en­sure that there is com­pli­ance with fil­ing re­quire­ments un­der ap­plic­a­ble leg­is­la­tion but al­so to pro­vide them with da­ta and its oth­er ser­vices in a time­ly and ef­fi­cient man­ner.

These clients and stake­hold­ers in­clude, but are not lim­it­ed to, com­mer­cial en­ter­pris­es, in­dus­tries, the le­gal, ac­count­ing and oth­er pro­fes­sions, the ju­di­cia­ry, law en­force­ment, oth­er Gov­ern­ment agen­cies, min­istries and diplo­mat­ic mis­sions.”

The site al­so ex­plained that un­der the Com­pa­nies Act, “each com­pa­ny, on the Reg­is­ter of Com­pa­nies main­tained by the Reg­is­trar, must file an An­nu­al Re­turn (“the Re­turn”), con­tain­ing the pre­scribed par­tic­u­lars, with the Reg­is­trar with­in thir­ty (30) days of the an­niver­sary of in­cor­po­ra­tion, con­tin­u­ance or amal­ga­ma­tion of the com­pa­ny.”

Last week, the of­fice of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs is­sued a no­tice con­cern­ing the web­site.

It was not a no­tice stat­ing that the prob­lems would be rec­ti­fied. In­stead, it stat­ed that for the rest of the month, those hop­ing to reg­is­ter com­pa­nies or con­duct trans­ac­tions tied to the site, would not be able to do so un­til at least Feb­ru­ary.

The no­tice stat­ed, “The Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment (the De­part­ment) wish­es to up­date mem­bers of the pub­lic on the dis­rup­tion of Com­pa­nies Reg­istry ser­vices fur­ther to the De­part­ment’s Pub­lic No­tice is­sued on Fri­day 16 De­cem­ber, 2022.

“As the De­part­ment pre­vi­ous­ly in­formed the pub­lic, on Fri­day 9 De­cem­ber, 2022, the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry sys­tem ex­pe­ri­enced a crash of its aged servers re­sult­ing in Com­pa­nies Reg­istry da­ta be­ing in­ac­ces­si­ble and con­se­quent­ly, the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry ser­vices were neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed.”

The no­tice con­tin­ued, “The De­part­ment ac­knowl­edges that this has caused great in­con­ve­nience to mem­bers of the pub­lic and wish­es to as­sure our clients and stake­hold­ers that we are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to re­solve our cur­rent chal­lenges.”

The Busi­ness Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed by a source, that this was the sec­ond time there had been a ma­jor serv­er crash as there had been a crash of the prop­er­ty data­base just over a year pri­or.

Sim­i­lar­ly, that crash was at­trib­uted to aged servers.

The Busi­ness Guardian was told there was a great con­cern that the serv­er crash was so se­vere that as a re­sult there may be da­ta loss.

These con­cerns were on­ly height­ened when last week’s no­tice then ex­plained that a new sys­tem is ex­pect­ed to be im­ple­ment­ed.

The sys­tem re­port­ed­ly will re­place the pre­vi­ous ser­vice.

The no­tice said, “In this re­gard, the De­part­ment ad­vis­es that the new­ly de­signed and cre­at­ed Com­pa­nies Reg­istry On­line Sys­tem (CROS) will be launched in the short­est pos­si­ble time. The pub­lic is ad­vised that to ac­cess CROS, reg­is­tra­tion for a Com­pa­nies Reg­istry Ac­count is re­quired. To reg­is­ter, please vis­it the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry web­site via www.legalaf­fairs.gov.II. Mem­bers of the pub­lic are there­fore en­cour­aged to reg­is­ter as we an­tic­i­pate that CROS will be launched and func­tion­al on Wednes­day 1 Feb­ru­ary, 2023.”

The no­tice closed, “We again apol­o­gise for any in­con­ve­nience caused and ap­pre­ci­ate your un­der­stand­ing in this mat­ter.”

The sit­u­a­tion has served as a blow to T&T’s al­ready much-ma­ligned ease of do­ing busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion.

In 2020, T&T was ranked 79 out of 180 economies on the ease of do­ing busi­ness in­dex.

The Com­pa­nies Reg­istry’s role in start­ing a busi­ness was hailed as a pos­i­tive in the 2020 re­port as it not­ed the search for a name and reg­is­tra­tion of a busi­ness name would take one day and three days re­spec­tive­ly.

Over­all, the re­port list­ed that it took ex­act­ly one week to start a busi­ness in T&T.

De­spite the is­sues, there have been very lit­tle to no com­plaints from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­cern­ing the is­sue.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Pres­i­dent Charles Pash­ley to find out if his mem­ber­ship had any is­sue with the sit­u­a­tion, but he said the Cham­ber would not com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion just yet.

He ex­plained that should the prob­lem per­sist, then the Cham­ber would is­sue a com­ment.

A sim­i­lar ques­tion was posed to the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, who told the Busi­ness Guardian that they had no com­ment as none of its mem­bers raised any is­sue about the sit­u­a­tion.

In the in­ter­im, the Busi­ness Guardian was told that sev­er­al cor­po­rate at­tor­neys are sim­ply play­ing a wait­ing game as their clients await the green light to reg­is­ter their busi­ness­es and con­duct trans­ac­tions on Feb­ru­ary 1.

How­ev­er, there is a con­cern that, on that day, the ser­vice could be­come over­sub­scribed and col­lapse once again.