Filings on MCA portal surge since Jan revamp
New Delhi, Jun 2, 2023
Filings by companies on the corporate affairs ministry’s revamped portal has surged since the roll-out of close to 50 web-based forms with real-time verification in January.
Over 530,000 company filings have taken place between the 23 January launch and 1 June, the ministry said.
The filings indicate the ministry is on course to migrating forms for annual returns and financial statement to the new system shortly, so that companies can use them in this year’s filing cycle.
Companies have to hold annual general meetings within six months of the financial year-end.
They have one month from the AGM to file financial statements and 60 days to file annual returns, without additional fee.
Mint reported on 10 May that the ministry would be rolling out around 30 more web-based forms for statutory filings under the Companies Act by the end of July, completing the transition to the new artificial intelligence-enabled corporate reporting regime.
These would include key reporting requirements— financial statements (form AOC-4) and annual returns (form MGT-7).
The tech upgrade of the filing system with enhanced security features for companies follows one for limited liability partnerships on the same portal—MCA21.
After that, over 520,000 LLP forms were filed in the revamped version in FY23, compared to 474,000 forms in the earlier version in FY22, data from the ministry showed.
The transition to the new filing system caused some professionals to report difficulties initially. A person aware about the technology upgrade said that lack of uniformity of the same field in different documents, such as names, would cause information mismatches.
Completing the transition to the new filing system would be a major milestone for compliance management as it would be a short in the arm for regulatory authorities to detect instances like delays in filing financial statements, an indicator of financial stress in companies. The new system is equipped to generate auto alerts to regulators and to the company about missed deadlines and various other defaults.
[Mint]
