Register a Company in Pakistan to formalize your business and avail tax benefits and other services. Once your business is part of the formal economy, it becomes more trustworthy, gets access to more opportunities, and grows much faster. In this article we go over some basic requirements and steps for incorporating a company in Pakistan.
Now there are lots of agents and lawyers running around who can take care of the whole process for you. However, they can charge over 15000 rupees for something you can do yourself in under 5000 rupees. Also, doing things yourself in Pakistan is better than counting on people to do such sensitive tasks for you. They can make dumb spelling errors, fill out forms without understanding your requirements and cause strange problems for you down the line.
Even if you want to use an agent to do this task for you, its good to understand what is involved. Continue reading to find out.
Requirements for company registration in Pakistan
- A Pakistani National Identity Card
- ID card of your next of kin, or family member, father, mother, son, daughter, spouse, sibling.
- ID Cards of your business partners who will having signing authorities. These are also called Directors.
- ID Cards of their next of kins.
- A mailing address for your business. This could be a home address, factory address, commercial plaza address, but it should be of the place you are operating from.
- Money for registration fees, bank account opening, and purchase of materials such as stamp and letterheads (approximately 5000 rupees)
- Money for depositing working capital into your corporate bank account.
- A computer with internet connection
- An active mobile phone number
- An active email address
How to register a company in Pakistan
Registration with SECP
Go to the Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan’s website and create an account. You will register yourself with the SECP using your NIC Number, email address, and phone number. There is a whole verification process involved where you receive SMS codes and authentication links in your email. You will also have to set up your PIN number. This PIN number will be your digital signature, so make sure you do not forget it.
Name Reservation and Company Incorporation Forms
After signing into your SECP Account, from the list of available processes, you can reserve a company name and incorporate it. You are then taken to a page where you type in your preferred company names and see whats available. After deciding your name you can fill out the rest of the forms, entering all the addresses, details as required. The forms are coded well to tell you if you made any errors or missed any fields.
After completing and saving your error free forms, you will have to review and confirm your Incorporation Forms, Memorandums, and Articles of Association. On the same page are some links to upload official documents. These include scans of your ID cards and other relevant documents in pdf format.
Sign Forms
After doing all those steps you will have to digitally sign your forms using your PIN that we talked about earlier.
Payment of Processing fees to SECP
Now you have to pay the processing fees. Read this Post To learn about the different methods of payment for SECP.
Confirmation of Form Submission and Company Incorporation
You will receive a confirmation email from the SECP regarding you application and form submission. If there are errors, the SECP admin will tell you exactly what to change in your forms. There will be no additional fees for those errors.
Once you do everything correctly, you will receive an email from the SECP official confirming your company registration and providing you with a Certificate of Incorporation. This is an important document that contains your company’s legal name and incorporation Number, You will need this for opening a corporate bank account and doing some FBR stuff. Note that the company incorporation process on SECP will also register you with the Pakistan Federal Board of Revenue and assigns you a National Tax Number (NTN).
What to do after you register your company
Your company is now incorporated. Now to make your company functional, you will need to open a corporate bank account, and pay up your capital. Click on the links to learn about those steps.
