Registration of new companies down by 27% in last fiscal year

Kathmandu / Oct 21: The number of new companies registered with the Office of the Company Registrar (OCR) has fallen by 26.9 percent in the last fiscal year.

According to the data of OCR, a total of 18,628 new companies were registered in the last fiscal year 2019/20, down from 25,492 new companies registered in the previous fiscal year 2018/19.

Officials at the OCR attribute the outbreak of COVID-19 and subsequent containment measures introduced by the government including lockdown to the decline of the registration of new companies.

According to the month-wise data, the highest decline on the registration of new companies is in the last quadrimester when the federal government had imposed a nation-wide lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Only 11 companies were registered in Baisakh (mid April to mid May)—the lowest monthly registration—in the last fiscal year compared to 1,918 companies registered in the same month in the previous fiscal year.

The new registration of companies slumped from the month of Chaitra (mid March to mid April) after the federal government imposed the nationwide lockdown on March 11 as part of containment measures to curb the spread of coronavirus. In the month of Chaitra (mid March to mid April), there were only 535 new companies registered at the OCR, down from 1,930 in the preceding month.

However, the number of newly registered companies rebounded in Asadh (mid June-mid July)—the last month of Nepali fiscal year—as the federal government eased some of the restrictions imposed during the lockdown.

In the month of Jestha (mid May to mid June), 133 new companies were registered in the country, according to the data of the OCR.