Bipa urged to suspend mass deregistration over customer portal

Calls are mounting for the Business and Intellectual Property Authority (Bipa) to suspend its planned mass deregistration until a digital customer portal has been established.

Namibian Institute of Public Administration and Management council member Matthew Gowaseb says Bipa should urgently consider establishing a customer portal to allow businesses owners to efficiently manage their compliance obligations.

“Such a platform would allow citizens to easily access information on their businesses, verify the status of annual payments and manage their compliance obligations,” he says.

According to Gowaseb, the customer portal has been long overdue when it should be a matter of serious concern for the board.
He says the Social Security Commission has a useful benchmark for Bipa to draw from.

To accelerate the process, they should engage unemployed information technology graduates and students from national tertiary institutions as interns to undertake the technical development.

“This would not only achieve digitisation cost-effectively but also contribute to addressing youth unemployment. We strongly urge the board to prioritise this intervention. Let us take this forward without delay,” he says.

Businessman Johannes Goamab has accused Bipa of targeting local businesses while ignoring foreign-owned companies that have been operating under the radar without paying taxes.

“Why is Bipa ignoring Chinese, Pakistani and Indian business operating in the country? In Windhoek at Chinatown alone, how many of those businesses pay tax, VAT, social security and so on?” he questions.

He calls for an equitable and fair system of policing businesses and suggests that many businesses are operating without product pricing systems.

“Some of those, if not the majority, don’t even have price tags on products they sell. They just suck prices out of their mouths, no receipts. Let’s have an equitable and fair system of policing businesses across the board,” he says.

Bipa acting chief executive Ainna Kaundu on Thursday announced that the authority will de-register more than 1 000 companies each month, starting on Friday, for failing to comply with the beneficial ownership disclosure regulation.

Kaundu said businesses have been given sufficient time from 2023 to comply with the beneficial ownership regulation.

Bipa spokesperson Ndapanda Toivo clarifies that the authority’s mandate is limited to business registration and intellectual property rights, stressing that tax compliance falls under the Namibia Revenue Agency (Namra).

“Bipa’s mandates are to register businesses and protect intellectual property rights. Kindly contact Namra, they are the ones dealing with tax,” she said.

Bipa began its awareness campaign to de-register non-compliant businesses in April this year.

Non-compliant business owners were warned of the risk of deregistration, which would be effective from 16 May if they failed to comply by that date.

The authority carried out a large-scale public awareness campaign to inform business owners of their new compliance obligations.

SMEs Compete director Danny Meyer says compliance is a non-negotiable requirement that should be enforced by the government’s business regulatory and taxation authorities without showing preferential treatment.

“There is no reason why enterprises owned by foreigners of Asian, or for that matter from the Americas, Europe or any other country, should be treated any differently than Namibian entrepreneurs or business managers,” he says.

Meyer, however, adds that Bipa’s business deregistration exercise has been publicised for some time now, giving enterprises at risk of deregistration enough time to take corrective actions.

Many companies, although registered entities, have not submitted annual returns and may have been dormant for years now.
“It is high time for such businesses to be deregistered anyway,” he says.

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