Introduction

The Department of Cooperatives under the Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry proposes an amendment of Statutory Instrument (S.I) No. 20 of 1999 outlining changes in the registration form for cooperatives, proposed fees for the registration of cooperatives and other services and the introduction of annual returns form.

Rationale

Section 8 of the Cooperatives Societies Act No. 20 of 1998 provides for the following: A cooperative with ten or more members shall, within a period of not more than twelve months from the date of adoption of its by-laws, and subject to Section nine and on payment of the prescribed fee, be registered as a cooperative society under this Act. The fees for the registration of primary cooperatives, cooperative unions and federations were last revised in 1999 and are no longer cost reflective in view of the increased cost of registration and also the registration of other forms of business entities falling under different statutory bodies such as the Patents and Companies Registration Agency, Zambia Development Agency and the Registrar of Societies. In a bid to harmonize the registration fees to make them economical and introduce other prescribed fees, the Department of Cooperatives proposes the increment of registration fees for primary cooperatives, cooperative unions and federations and also introduced filing fees for annual returns.  

Background

The Department of cooperatives in its quest to promote cooperatives in Zambia has undertaken measures to simplify the process of registration of cooperatives. In doing so the registration forms have been amended to allow for easier understanding of the requirements for registration. As such the number of pages of the registrations forms have been reduced from five (5) to three (3) pages. A number of items in the old form were dropped as indicated below.

Proposed changes to Form 1

The following have been proposed for amendment in Form 1

• Inclusion of a table with sub-headings indicating Name, NRC, Address/village and contact number as indicated on Item 1.
• Under item 2 provision is made for three proposed names for the cooperative.
• Under item 3 a provision is made for Physical, Postal and email address.
• Under item 7, the sentence  “The registration fee is enclosed” is deleted and replaced with the following “A bank deposit slip for registration fee is hereby attached”
• On the old form items 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 are dropped.

Comments are invited on the proposed amendments.

Ministry of Commerce,Trade and Industry - Head Office

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