The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Tuesday it saw a record number of company registrations in 2023 amid the easier registration process.
It said in a statement 46,445 firms successfully registered using the SEC’s Electronic Simplified Processing of Application for Registration of Corporation (eSPARC) from January to November 2023, surpassing the previous record of 42,936 for the entire 2022.
“In the past five years, the SEC has fiercely advocated for digital transformation to achieve efficiency and accessibility in the corporate sector. The back-to-back record highs seen in 2022 and 2023 for company registration prove that we are succeeding in making doing business easier in the Philippines,” SEC chairperson Emilio Aquino said.
“As we start a new year, the SEC is ready to further take advantage of automated processes in place, as well as develop new systems, to ensure the smooth delivery of services to the transacting public,” he said.
The SEC attributed the higher number of new registrations to the success of its digital initiatives, starting with the launch of eSPARC in April 2021 and its subsystem, the One Day Submission and Electronic Registration of Companies (OneSEC) in September 2021.
The eSPARC reduced the time needed to register a company from 34 to three days.
Data from the SEC showed that domestic stock corporations accounted for 74 percent or 34,140 of newly-registered firms, indicating positive business sentiment
About 9,727 or 21 percent are domestic non-stock corporations, and 2,453 or 5 percent are partnerships, while the rest are foreign stock and non-stock corporations.
It said of the newly-registered firms, 36 percent or 16,734 are domestic stock corporations with less than five incorporators, and about 14 percent are one-person corporations (OPCs).
The enactment of Republic Act No. 11232, or the Revised Corporation Code of the Philippines, in 2019 paved the way for the formation of OPCs and corporations with less than five incorporators. The old Corporation Code had required at least five incorporators.
More than a third of newly-registered firms were from Metro Manila at 18,342. This was followed by Region IV-A (CALABARZON) at 7,217 and Region III (Central Luzon) at 5,107.
Outside Metro Manila, the largest number of newly registered firms came from Central Visayas and the Davao Region at 3,443 and 1,969, respectively.