The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Attorney General yesterday said the Government wanted the Registrar General’s Department to match leading ‘ease of business’ jurisdictions such as Singapore, adding that plans to make key services completely electronic would bring it “into the 21st century”.

While acknowledging that there was “no magic wand to be waved” when it came to enhancing the Registrar General’s efficiency and response time, Allyson Maynard-Gibson said plans to upgrade key services to the private sector were in place and set to be “systematically implemented”.

While Mrs Maynard-Gibson declined to go into specifics, Tribune Business understands the initiative is effectively a resumption of the project she was undertaking when in the Attorney General’s post last time, prior to the 2007 general election.

The goal is 100 per cent computerisation of key services, and getting all records in its databases/archives put online and made electronic.

This newspaper was told that among the targets is a 30-day turnaround time on real estate transactions, with all title deeds and documents indexed, lodged and returned to the relevant attorneys/owners within that timeline.

On the Companies Registry, Tribune Business understands that the Government “as soon as it can” wants to make the incorporation of International Business Companies (IBCs) and Companies Act companies “completely online”.

This will not only enable financial services providers and others to create companies, but obtain electronic signatures and have Certificates of Incorporation issued right away once all relevant fees are paid.

The Government is working with consultants to install software that covers all the necessary fields, and automatically puts the Registrar General’s signature on documents once everything is in order.

A major impediment to efficiency is the prevailing manual system at the Registrar General’s Department, where all documents have to be read by the Registrar General and his team before being signed off.

Tribune Business understands that the Government’s ultimate plan is to have Certificates of Good Standing and Certificates of Dissolution, as they pertain to companies, issues electronically with all documents contained in an online database.

The Christie administration has also engaged the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) for a project designed to upgrade the trademark capabilities of the Registrar General’s Department.

All trademark-related documents are being scanned into a database, and one source said: “We can say we have a WIPO-certified Registry.”

This would be especially timely given the Bahamas’ bid to accede to full World Trade Organisation (WTO) membership, given that intellectual property rights are a major issue here and with all international trade agreements.

Finally, Tribune Business understands that the Registrar General’s Department and the Government are working very closely with the cruise lines to upgrade the Register of Maritime Marriages, to the extent that certificates and signatures can be done online. Reforms to the relevant Acts are in the pipeline

Improving the speed and efficiency with which the Registrar General’s Department functions is seen as vital to bolstering the Bahamas’ competitiveness and ease of doing business, given that it is the ‘hub’ around which the private sector - especially the real estate and financial services industries - functions.

All in the private sector, indeed every Bahamian and resident, has to ‘touch’ the Registrar General’s Department at some point in their lives as it deals with birth, marriage and death certificates.

“Whether we are going to talk about doing international or local business, the Registrar General’s is critical to that. It is the hub for everything,” Mrs Maynard-Gibson told Tribune Business.

Acknowledging that it could not continue to operate using current procedures, she added: “The Government intends that our Registrar General’s Department should be looked at, at the end of the day, as one that is comparable to BVI, Singapore - jurisdictions where there is a significant ease of doing business.

“I would like to say that as we go into this project we will be able to count on the private sector to assist in getting us there, and the team at the Registrar General’s understands the critical importance of bringing the Registry into the 21st century, with the support, training, hardware and software necessary to do so.”

Adding that the Registrar General’s Department was “well on the way” to achieving these objectives, Mrs Maynard-Gibson said: “Some of it is in training. We’re trying it out right now, and when we’re ready to connect some of it, we will.”

Certified copies of birth and death certificates were already being issued through the island administrator’s office in Abaco, and the Attorney General said the Government planned to expand this decentralisation to other documents and Family Islands, so Bahamians living there did not have to undertake expensive journeys to Nassau.

Admitting that improving the Registrar’s General Department was “tremendously important” to the Bahamas’ competitiveness, Mrs Maynard-Gibson added: “There is no magic wand to be waved, no solution overnight.

“There is a plan of action, and we are systematically implementing that with the private sector. We look forward to designing something that puts the Bahamas where we need to be, and people expect us to be, in the 21st century.

“We think it is critical to have a strong private-public sector collaboration. It is they who are going to be using the services, and we intend to ensure the services delivered are the ones they feel will make the Bahamas more competitive, as they are out there marketing this nation.”

Aliya Allen, the Bahamas Financial Services Board’s (BFSB) chief executive/executive director, told Tribune Business: “I welcome the fact there are some developments going on with the Registrar General’s Department.

“The Attorney General has certainly committed to the BFSB and the industry that this remains a high priority agenda item in turning the Registrar General’s Department around.

“We hope, and have been advised, that we will be engaged in an evaluation of what needs to be done. That would be incredibly good news for the Bahamas.”