New Corporate registrations surge 28% this year

By John Marino
marino@caribbeanbusinesspr.com

A series of new Puerto Rico State Department services for businesses are available online starting this week, CARIBBEAN BUSINESS learned.

The new services, which Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock was expected to unveil today during a speech at the Santurce Rotary Club, include the registration of foreign corporations and limited-liability companies.

In addition, corporations that have filed annual reports for the past five years will be able to get their certificates of good standing over the Internet.  The State Department has identified about 25,000 corporations that are eligible to receive the service, which delivers this important document in five minutes to any place with an Internet connection.

The certificates are used by corporations to prove they comply with local laws and are authorized to do business in P.R.  They are often required for loans and other financial transactions.

Two other important services that can now be completed online are for the registration of special municipal-development corporations and limited-liability partnerships.

The State Department is also unveiling a new online database that facilitates researching data on corporations, which is public information.

New corporate registrations are surging 28% above last year’s pace, with 5,458 corporations registered online and 2,204 through traditional filing for a total of 7,662.  Last year, 5,520 corporations were registered on paper, before the advent of online registration.

In the past, one had to wait weeks for a government official to evaluate requests to register corporation after citizens filed personal requests and sent them in by mail.  Now, the process takes 15 to 20 minutes, and can be done seven days a week, 24 hours a day, McClintock said.  He said 30% of corporate-registration requests were made during nonworking hours, including weekends.

So far this year, the State Department has emitted 15, 035 certificates of good standing, both electronically and on paper.  That is 23% above the11,613 emitted last year, when all certificate were released via the traditional paper method.

The State Department has also been immersed in the process of digitizing the entire corporate history or P.R., by converting its paper documents into electronic documents