SECP proposes amendments in Companies Act 2017.

Lahore: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has issued a draft of the Companies (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020; which proposes amendments to the Companies Act 2017 for implementing the government’s ease-of-doing-business initiative.

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Under the Companies (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, SECP can implement measures for providing greater ease-of-doing-business, improving regulatory quality and efficiency and facilitating innovation and the use of technology in conducting business by the corporate sector. These measures include efforts to formalize existing practices through regulations and implementing other measures for attaining international standards of regulatory quality and efficiency for greater ease of doing business.

The amendment also allows the commission to specify modes and procedures for enabling greater ease of entry into and exit from the market to start-up companies.

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It also allows SECP to implement measures for constituting special task groups from the corporate sector to encourage the use of financial technology in businesses and creating environments for testing and examining the impact of innovation, new processes or technologies outside the existing regulatory framework. These include crowdfunding, digital assets, Open APIs, Smart Contracts, cloud-based solutions and allowing the establishment and use of regulatory sandboxes.