Bulgarian Company Re-registration regulations

Company re-registration in Bulgaria

Due to the huge interest regarding the company re-registration we would like to outline a few points that will clear the reason for that change and will explain why it was necessary.

In the spirit of the good European practice the Bulgarian Parliament passed a law for the Trade Registry which is in power from 01.10.2006. According to this law the trade registration will be done in the territorial sections of the Trade Agency to the Ministry of Justice following an entirely new procedure. Rearranging the Trade registration from judicial to administrative is expected to bring to facilitation of the procedure and improving the quality of the service on one hand and relieve the work of the courts on the other.

The most essential changes of the procedure of the Trade registration might be generalized like that :

• Switching from judicial to administrative registration procedure
• Keeping a unified and centralized Trade RegistryRequirement for immediate issue of Certificate;
  
• Providing a possibility of distanced access to the Data Base of the Trade Registry
• Dropping out the duty for publishing the Registry Certificates in the State Newspaper and exchange with the duty to publish the Certificates in the Trade Registry;
  
• Induction of Uniform Identification Code for all individuals entered in the Trade Registry which replaces the existing up to now BULSTAT
• Induction of requirement for national uniqueness for the individuals entered in the Trade Registry.
• With the new law the companies will have unique name for the territory of whole Bulgaria not only for the territory of the Municipal court as it was before.

Foreseeing the increasing usage of the new technology and internet the law obliges the Agency of Trade Registry to provide possibility for distanced access to the Registry and to provide possibility for issuing certificates in electronic form. The Trade Registry is already public and every one can has right of free access to it.

With the purpose to create that Electronic Trade Registry the Law obliges all companies to re-register according to the new procedure. The Law gives three years period to everyone who wants to re-register the company registered with the court, starting from 01.10.2006. So All companies registered according to the old procedure by the court must be re-registered. Generally these are all the companies registered in Bulgaria before 01.01.2008.

When the 3 year's period for re-registration expires the court will officially issue re-registration certificates to the companies that have not re-registered and will send them to the Agency together with the possibility to access their personal company files and make copies from them. After that is done by the Agency the court will send the company files into archive. The Agency will officially enter the Trader and the termination of his activity and will appoint liquidator and will define his reward as well as the terms of the liquidation. All expenses involved in the official liquidation will be claimed to the Trader.