KARACHI – The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) registered 2,223 new companies in September 2021, up by 20% over the same period in the preceding year. Total capitalization (paid-up capital) of the new companies stood at Rs. 2.8 billion and the total number of registered companies has risen to 1,52,089.
Private Limited companies accounted for 65% of the new incorporations, whereas 32% were registered as single-member. The remaining 3% were registered as public unlisted companies, not-for-profit associations, trade organizations, and limited liability partnerships (LLP). Approximately 99% of companies were registered online and 210 foreign users were registered from overseas.
Sector-wise, the construction & real estate sector took the lead with the incorporation of (377) companies, followed by information technology (316), trading (310), services (209), food & beverages sector (85), textile (74), eCommerce (74), education (66), market & development (54), corporate agricultural farming (53), pharmaceutical (52), engineering (46), healthcare (45), tourism (43), auto & allied (38), chemical (38), transport (37), mining & quarrying (3) and power generation (30), paper & board (27), logging (26), cosmetics & toiletries (23), fuel & energy (19), cables & electric goods (18), communications (17), steel & allied (16), and wood products (16) and broadcasting & telecasting (15) and 69 companies were registered in other sectors.
Foreign investment has been reported in 61 new companies, reporting foreign investors from Australia, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, Germany, Hong Kong, Iraq, Jordan, Korea South, Paraguay, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, UK, the USA and Zambia.
