New look, new stuff and a new price

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs will charge 100% more for the service of allowing people to view public documents of registered companies on its website

The changes in the official website of Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) are exciting, to say the least. I understand the new look is now a few weeks old. The white background and grey fonts themselves were such a relief. Besides the pleasing layout and easy to access short cuts, the website is now better organised and is navigable easily. Just spending a few hours made me comfortable and I could remember and recall what was where. All I can recall of the previous site was that I could never recall anything. Every time it was a new episode of Alice in Wonderland. Thankfully, it's gone.

There is a better compartmentalisation of content with an entire section titled 'statistics and reports'.

This section has updated details of information on nidhi companies, plantation companies, non-banking finance companies and region-wise break up of vanishing companies. For example, I learnt that there are 35,473 companies registered as non-banking finance companies. The list updated to December 31, 2013 gives the names and vital details of each of these companies.

Another interesting list was that of companies incorporated for charitable purposes, which had some 4,878 names. Some companies here like the Ootacamund Gymkhana Club were of 19th century vintage. There were others like Young Indian, which were of more recent origin but were more popular due to their important shareholders and the important shares they hold.

There is also an updated list of companies against which complaints of indulging in MLM (multi-level marketing) and chit fund activities have been received by the ministry as of March 2014. Eighty-nine such companies have been listed which include some of them already facing regulatory action such as Saradha, Speak Asia Online and City Limousines. Hope these details are updated regularly and kept alive.

Apart from these, there is a monthly update which gives the exact number of companies that are operating in the country. "The total number of companies registered in the country as on May 31, stood at 13,97,383. Of them, 2,55,867 companies were closed; 1,42,256 companies were lying dormant; 5,102 companies were under liquidation; 23,356 companies were in the process of being struck-off and 204 companies were in the process of being re-activated. Taking the above into account, there were 9,70,598 active companies as on May 31," the latest update said.

Such data is important for analysis and helps capture trends in corporate activity and calibrate policy responses appropriately. There is a section titled archives, which said the data will be made available 'as and when available.' Hope this is done quickly.

Now let us have some bad news. The bad news is that MCA will charge 100 per cent more for the service of allowing people to view public documents of registered companies.

Documents of one company will now cost Rs 100 for a few hours of viewing, up from Rs 50 earlier. This steep increase is unjustified. Instead the ministry could make more money adding to the filing fees of big corporate players. But, obviously support is not going to pour out on the streets and hopes of a rollback are slim.

At least, the ministry could work on increasing number of banks processing payments and refunding of failed payments more promptly. Last week, I lost Rs 200.