The acting Registrar General, Mrs Jemima Oware, told the Daily Graphic that the decision, apart from being a best practice, was to enable the department to know the location of all businesses in the country.

She said the department was working with the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Trade and Industry to ensure that the digital address of businesses in the country was captured electronically.

For already registered businesses, she said, their digital addresses would be required when they were filing their annual returns.

“It is not a difficult thing to do. You download the GhanaPostGPS app, stand in front of your office, generate your address and make sure you add it your document so that we would also capture it in our system electronically,” she said.

File returns

Mrs Oware also reminded businesses that it was compulsory to file their returns and stated that “by April 30, 2018, if a business has not filed its 2017 returns, there would be an additional penalty.

“For now, the penalty is GH¢300 across board. It is flat. But we would increase it up to GH¢350, in addition to the number of years they have to pay for the filing of their returns. I would encourage all businesses to file their returns before that date,” she added.

Growing interest

Meanwhile, the acting Managing Director of Ghana Post, Mr James Kwofie, said there was growing interest in the business community about the use of the GhanaPostGPS.

He said there were a lot of applications from various service providers to share application programme interface (API), so that they could verify the validity of addresses.

“We are collaborating with the Bank of Ghana, the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) and the National Identification Authority (NIA) on how to quickly use the digital address for their operations,” Mr Kwofie said.

He added that the Bank of Ghana intended to make the financial institutions use the digital address as part of the ‘know your customer’, as well as to regulate the remittances of telcos. The telcos would also use it to make sure that the addresses are tied to particular accounts to reduce incidence of mobile money fraud.

Compulsory for agencies

In a related development, the Ministry of Communications has directed that all agencies should ensure that they have their digital addresses embossed on their premises and also included on their letterheads.

A statement dated December 20, 2017, signed and issued by the Chief Director of the Ministry, Mr Issah Yahya, said: “The government launched the National Digital Property Addressing System to pave way for every property.”