TO START AND REGISTER A BUSINESS ENTERPRISE IN KENYA IS NOW AN EASY TASK

File: business partners shaking hands. Entrepreneurs can now register their businesses online.

( NOTE: THIS POST WAS WRITTEN IN JULY 24TH, 2014)
By Maritim Kipngetich

Business is known around the world as the best means to grow the economy by double digits, but many nations including Kenya have several steps for people to follow when registering it and this has made many of them run away and opt for other easier ways which include sole proprietorship and even partnership businesses which are already registered.
It is an obligation of each and every nation to make sure that this tedious ways of legalizing business are reduced to pave way for emerging business people to register their businesses with ease.
The President of Kenya has recently made sure that the people who are interested in starting businesses are not deterred by long processes of registration. He has urged the people concern including Kenya Revenue Authority(KRA) officials to make sure that the long procedures of business registration which have been in existence for many years be reduced so that people can be in a position to register it as fast as possible.
The business registration process normally involve ten procedures with whoever wants to be an entrepreneur would draft a enterprise  name and send it to registrar of companies who would in turn take almost a month to make sure that the name does not coincide with other registered names. That process is absolutely simple now and the business people can obtain full registration within some hours.
Recently, a website was launched which allow people to register their businesses online. The online platform called incorporator has been established. This is the Genius Executive Limited aimed at saving the entrepreneurs the trouble of having to visit the companies’ registrar offices in person. This online platform, therefore, has been embraced by entrepreneurs with exhilaration of acute ecstasy since they will not be required to move from their homes to registrar offices.
The launched business registration online platform will enable the entrepreneurs to pay the charges via a VISA card or even an M-pesa.
Jonathan Mwege is the Deputy Governor of Nairobi County and he said one can get his/her business registered within the shortest time possible via an internet. Speaking in Citizen Business Centre interview at the Citizen Television, the Deputy Governor said they have experts who verify the information given by a person who want to start a business enterprise within Nairobi: whoever found lying will have his/her license revoked.
“We have launched an online platform in Nairobi County which can allow people to register their businesses within five minutes and we have the specialists who confirm whether you said the truth. If one lies, we shall have his/her permit cancelled.” He said.
He also said business registration should be devolved to counties since it is the people in the counties who are doing the businesses.
“There is no need having registration of businesses in Nairobi when the people in the counties are the one carrying out business,” he reiterated.
The Deputy Governor asked the people of Nairobi to take the advantage of the current adjustments to start and register their businesses.
The people who are interested in registering the businesses around the country should actually utilize this seized opportunity.
It is unfortunate that Kenya is number 121 worldwide according to World Bank Doing Business Report out of 185 countries. Rwanda is the only country in East Africa which adopted the business registration technology long ago and it emerged number 30 worldwide according to the report.