BIPA launches annual duty campaign

By Business Reporter

THE Business and Intellectual Property Authority (BIPA) has launched its yearly duty campaign for 2021 entitled ‘Good Standing makes Good Business’.

The objective of the campaign is centred on improving compliance from business owners and ensuring such entities remain in good standing.

In terms of the laws regulating business registration, each business is required to lodge with BIPA, at the end of their financial year, a full annual return and make payment of the required annual duties, irrespective if an entity is in operation or not.

This legal requirement applies to both close corporations (CCs) as well as companies. Failure to pay annual duties may attract penalties for each month of non-payment. BIPA may also initiate a non-voluntary deregistration process and all such entities may be subject to deregistration.

BIPA has now streamlined its business registration services to ensure that clients can simply and seamlessly submit their annual returns and pay their annual duties; and in doing so, benefit from national economic opportunities.

Since its establishment in 2016, BIPA has experienced various challenges in respect of annual duty collections from established businesses. However, the authority’s current processes of issuing statement of accounts monthly to business entities, now makes it easier for such businesses to affect payment against the invoiced amounts.

“We urge business owners to act promptly when they receive their statement of accounts to avoid compounded penalties and even prevent deregistration of their hard-earned business brands” says Vivienne Katjiuongua, BIPA chief executive officer. BIPA also announced that all businesses that are paid up will now qualify for a good standing certificate and may participate in national tender processes. The good standing certificate will soon be a requirement by all public entities for the participation of procurement bids.

“We realised that clients who are paid up with BIPA have the additional benefit of qualifying for national tender processes, hence we introduced a good standing certificate for these paid-up entities.

This makes it easier for Namibian SMEs to do business, and aligns with BIPA’s endeavour to improve its service delivery,” noted Ockert Jansen, executive: marketing, corporate communications and client management services.