Aided by a conducive business climate, new company registrations in India continue to be on a roll despite pandemic-induced challenges. As many as 7.17 lakh new companies have got themselves registered since 2016-17, the year of demonetisation, official data tabled in Parliament showed.
However, the number of companies that were closed down (struck off from the register of companies or dissolved due to amalgamation) since April 1, 2016, till date was quite sizeable at 5.06 lakh companies, the data showed.
The number of new companies registered between April 1 of this year to now stood at 1.09 lakh companies, according to a Lok Sabha reply by Rao Inderjit Singh, Minister of State for Corporate Affairs. He is also the Minister of State (independent charge) for the Statistics Ministry and Ministry of Planning. In all of 2020-21, the number of new registered companies stood at 1.55 lakh companies.
Steady rise
Since 2016-17, yearly new company registrations have been on a rise from 97,840 (2016-17) to 1,08,075 (2017-18), 1,23,938 (2018-19), 1,22,721 (2019-20) and 1,55,377 in 2020-21, official data showed.
Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Gujarat topped the charts in the last five years.
As regards closure of companies, the maximum closure happened in 2017-18 , a year after demonetisation, when 2.36 lakh companies were closed after the government went on a clean up drive.
Also see: Don’t saddle banks with start-up finance
The number of companies that got closed in subsequent years stood at 143233 (2018-19), 70,972 (2019-20), 14,674 (2020-21) and 22,557 so far this fiscal, the data showed. Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat and Delhi topped the charts in terms of regions that saw maximum closure of companies.