Johannesburg – There has been a surge of new business registrations in South Africa since the hard lockdown measures were implemented in the county, to stem the spread of the Covid-19 virus.
Entrepreneurs changed their strategies and business plans in order to survive.
Lauren Deva, Head of Sales for Transactional Product House at FNB Business said: “We have seen an increase in the number of businesses starting to use BizPortal, a government initiative where entrepreneurs use the BizPortal.gov.za website to register their new businesses at the CIPC (Companies and Intellectual Property Commission). Once registered, they are prompted to open a business bank account, followed by a listing of the different banks.”
According to FNB data Gauteng led with 44% of applications followed by KwaZulu- Natal at 13%, Mpumalanga at 10% and the Western Cape at 9%.
“We are seeing a strong uptake through this portal as well as an increase in applications through our normal CIPC interactions, where clients can register a company on FNB’s website. This indicates that more and more entrepreneurs want to formalise their businesses in order take advantage of new opportunities presented as a result of COVID and further benefit from financial support provided by both private and public sector,” Deva said.
“When the BizPortal started, we initially had an average of 700 registrations a month. However, this significantly increased to 14 000 registrations during the lockdown period, between April and end of August. On average 2 800 businesses were registered per month via the portal,” she added.
A lot of businesses have used the lockdown period to either open their own personal services business, or to formalise their existing business for relief funding and operating permits.
