The government is studying measures to extend the renewal of commercial registrations from the current one year to five years, a senior Qatar Chamber official said on Tuesday on the sidelines of a seminar in Doha.
The seminar titled ‘Challenges Facing Services Provided by Government Bodies to the Privates Sector’ focused on several issues, including logistics and transportation, as well as challenges in visa and residence permits, according to Qatar Chamber board member Ali Abdullatif al-Misnad.
On the plan to extend the renewal period of commercial registrations, al-Misnad said the government is “almost close to finalising” measures to extend the renewal period, including other business documents and certificates.
“These are very important documents for the activity of any business in Qatar. Furthermore, when companies in the country will have the same validity periods for these documents, it will definitely ease a lot of technical and logistics challenges, so I can assure you that the government has an open mind and the authorities are doing their level best to make sure that the private sector will be able to overcome any issue,” al-Misnad told reporters.
This was reiterated by Ayed Manahi al-Qahtany, the director of Commercial Registration and Licensing at the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, who said the issue “is currently being examined at the Consultative Council.”
Qatar Ports Management Company (Mwani Qatar) Strategy & Business Development manager Jabor Ali al-Sulaiti also told media that the meeting also addressed the issue of high freight costs and storage at Hamad Port.
Al-Sulaiti said since the start of the blockade, Mwani Qatar and the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) worked to attract more direct lines to Qatar, in collaboration with partners in the international shipping industry.
“This had contributed in the lowering of costs in the freight rates at Hamad Port. On the issue of storage, plans are underway to extend the storage area in CT1 (Container Terminal 1) to give more space for storage,” he said, adding that the meeting also heard a proposal to extend storage time at Hamad Port from the current three days to five or more days.
During the seminar, the participants and government representatives also discussed proposals of unifying expiry dates of all documents to one fixed date, high fees of separating the branch from the mother company, and the ban imposed on companies violating regulations and laws.
It also discussed challenges on the approval of competent bodies to transfer an employee from one company to another without obtaining approval from the first company.
Mohamed Ali al-Meer, the director of Labour Inspection Department at the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs, said: “The objective of banning companies that violate labour regulations aims to give them a chance to solve all problems facing them not to punish them.”
Al-Meer, who noted that the ban is electronically-implemented in accordance with legal procedures, urged all companies to abide by Qatar’s wage protection system (WPS) “to avoid being banned."
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