SEC records 540 new stock companies in Davao Region

..A TOTAL of 540 new stock companies have registered for the first eight months of 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Davao Extension Field Office reported Monday. SEC-Davao director, Lawyer Javey Paul Francisco, speaking in yesterday's Kapehan sa Dabaw at SM City, said there is an increase of at least 13.4 percent in the total number of registrants from January to August this year as against the same period last year with only 476 registered companies. Francisco attributed the increase to the bullish business condition and the continuous increase of investors' confidence in Davao Region, especially in Davao City. Davao, he said, can attract more industry players to put up businesses in the region. Of the total new SEC-registered companies, 70 percent are said to be operating in Davao City. Francisco said more than 50 percent of these companies are family-owned and are mostly into wholesale, retail and trade businesses. There is a total of P3.2 billion approved capital stock investments for the new SEC-registered companies, according to Francisco. In terms of registration fees, SEC-Davao netted some P32 million last year. And although Francisco cannot account how much they have collected so far this year, he estimated a collection of from P33 million to P34 million by the end of December, provided there’s an increase in the number of business corporations this year. Registration fees imposed on companies are based on business capital, or "1/5 of the 1 percent of the authorized capital investment." "Our target is to have more corporations to monitor and penalize," Francisco said, adding that they surpassed the number of companies monitored last year with a total of 6,000 within the area of SEC-Davao. SEC-Davao also covers areas outside Region 11 such as in Region 12, and some parts of Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), Surigao del Sur and Cotabato City. Francisco said companies are required to submit General Information Sheet and Audited Financial Statements reports yearly to SEC-Davao. Failure to submit reports may lead to revocation of these companies SEC-registration. "If they are not submitting reports for three years, we’ll send them letters. If they still don't answer, we will revoke their registration)," he said. SEC-Davao has revoked about 1,000 company registrations for non-compliance of reports since 2002. Most of these companies are family-owned since many of the big corporations have the compliant officers who regularly submit reports. Meanwhile, SEC-Davao reported a total of 616 new non-stock corporations as of January to August this year while 627 non-stock groups were recorded last year. Non-stock corporations are private groups and clubs. SEC is an agency assigned in the registration, monitoring, and regulation of all the stock businesses, which include business partnerships and corporations and non-stock corporations. ..