Registrar of Companies website crashes, down for more than five days
Sri Lanka’s much vaunted electronic company registration facility, e-ROC, has come to a grinding halt, delaying seriously the registration of companies or filing of company information during this week and incurring a loss of around Rs. 30 million.
The disruption, which began on July 13, is reportedly a result of the lapse of the contract with global consultancy KPMG, which had run the system hitherto.
KPMG Sri Lanka was the supplier and maintainer of the automated solution for this e-Registration of Companies Project (e-ROC), while Informatics Co. had developed the software and web based platform launched in 2018.
The office of the Registrar of Companies. Pic by Eshan Fernando.
The e-ROC system was initiated under the leadership of then Registrar General D.N.R. Siriwardena, who pushed through despite strong resistance from within the department and outside interests seeking to maintain the status quo, informed sources said.
The Department of the Registrar of Companies (DRC) stated that the system remains offline at present and the matter will be resolved next week as KMPG has agreed to restart operations although their contract expired on May 31.
A spokesman of the KMPG told The Sunday Times Business that they have informed the department in writing about the need of extension of their contract but no action had been taken to renew it forcing them to suspend their maintenance services.
However at a meeting held on Thursday under the patronage of the Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Eranga Weeraratne, the company had agreed to restart the system the next day (Friday).
He noted that their company team has carried out their services diligently without any breakdowns during the past eight years but they were not informed about any decision of discontinuing their services. The Sri Lanka Army IT team is expected to (temporarily) take over e-ROC operations and the computerised system, modelled on international best practices, introduced with the aim of increasing transparency, eliminating corruption, and streamlining business services.
The failure of this critical web-based system has caused widespread concern across the business community.
Entrepreneurs, legal representatives, and company secretaries are now forced to revert to manual systems to attend urgent registrations, and mounting backlogs around 600 files and access restrictions only help to render the situation all the more complex.
Delays in obtaining Form 15 approvals, shareholder changes, and company registrations—processes that were earlier completed within 24–48 hours under the e-ROC system—are being experienced by users.
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