Incorporating a business in Sri Lanka is compulsory once you have decided to run a company in Sri Lanka. However, there are several regulatory steps when proceeding for business registration. In order to lawfully run a business, these steps are vital. We took suggestions from experts owning various business consulting companies in Sri Lanka, for instance, S & F consulting firm, regarding business incorporating process in Sri Lanka.

When you are planning to elevate your career on business in Sri Lanka, you first need to have a fixed mindset of the business you are planning to set here. If you think you are mentally ready than, this article provides recommended steps that should keep you up to date regarding the company registration process in Sri Lanka.

1. Did you select a company name yet?

The very first formal task you need to perform is registering a unique name for your company. The company registration act of Sri Lanka strongly asks for a unique name registration for any company. It is compulsory by the corporate law of Sri Lanka when setting up a trade here. For this you have to draft and carefully complete FORM-A16. Once done with final drafting, submit the completed form to the department of the Registrar of Companies. Here authorities will go through required cross verifications. The name registration takes about three working days for all approvals.

2. Hire a secretary for the new company

A new company in Sri Lanka must recruit a secretary. The company secretary is a must if the company turnover is more than three million. However, the task of a secretary includes maintaining important paperwork collected by the register. The secretary also needs to manage all legal papers that corresponded with the authorities.

3. Don’t ignore the registration formalities

Get ready with three company registration form that you need to collect from online. These are form-1, form-18 and form-19. Here these three separate forms ask for company details, company owner, shareholder, and secretary details individually. Under Section 475, you must fill-up these three forms and submit those to the company registrar authority of Sri Lanka. Once approved, you have officially completed the company registration formalities, and certified accordingly.

4. An AoA for your company

Agreement of Association or AoA is the agreement policy that acts as a sole constitutional document of your business. A company can either establish its own policy, which is a custom policy especially established for your company requirements or adopt the default model set by the government of Sri Lanka. The Company Act 7 of 2007 suggests this article document as a must requirement. This helps to maintain rights and obligations among management and administrations in your business.

5. A corporate bank account for all monetary solutions

Don’t forget to open a company bank account during your company incorporation process. This account will establish all monetary relevance correspondences of your company. In a typical condition, banks in Sri Lanka take a week of time to make your company bank account fully functional and ready for any correspondence.

6. Publish public notices

On finishing the steps above, it’s time for you to publish a public notice. Every company must publish this notice on at least three national newspapers. The notice provides information about the company's name, address, registration no. contact no. etc. You must place this notice within 30 days of registration completion.

7. Other approvals documents

Additional business certificates might be necessary in some cases. For instance, BOI and SEC certification is necessary in some businesses. If you have a private limited company and need to hire foreign staff, BOI is compulsory. There are several BOI approval procedures, which if needed must be taken under consideration. If your company has public shares, SEC approval will be mandatory. Several board of Investment approvals are also recommended for manufacturing, retail or branch offices in Sri Lanka.

If you want to get a deeper knowledge of these approvals, contact with S & F Consulting farm. A renowned business consulting firm in Sri Lanka. Here Business experts are ready to solve all your incorporation related queries once ready for incorporating a business in Sri Lanka.

Md. Forhad Hossain Founder and Managing Director of S & F Consulting Group since 2012. Expert on Company Secretarial, Company Law, Merger, Income Tax Law, Foreign Direct Investment (Fdi) Law, International Trade Law and so on.