2.10.1 The growing importance of the Corporate Sector calls for a greater transparency and availability of data. Furthermore, with the withdrawal of various direct regulatory functions of the Government such as industrial licensing, import licensing, capital issues and exchange controls, a number of avenues of collection of data have ceased to exist while the need for data for the success of indicative planning, forecasting and for research purposes has grown. Finally, the onset of the knowledge-based sectors or the new economy requires better reporting standards of certain attributes to help monitor the national economic performance and its future outlook.
2.10.2 The Corporate Sector includes not only the domestic corporates but multinational companies of various types as well. In the Department of Company Affairs (DCA), the Registrars of Companies (ROCs) are primarily responsible for provision of the basic information on the Corporate Sector and the statistical machinery in the ROCs is inadequate to deal with this task. The frame of the Corporate Sector maintained by the ROCs is highly inadequate and the available information is not properly processed for wider dissemination. Therefore, the Commission recommends a one-time census of all registered companies by the DCA, which will help to create a frame by eliminating closed or defunct companies and also to facilitate the estimation of population parameters. The ROCs, vested with the responsibilities for allotting the Corporate Index Number (CIN), should monitor the submission of annual reports rigorously for a proper implementation of the Act and for purposes of annual updation of the frame as well as improvement of the database. The DCA and ROCs should process information available in the company balance sheets and produce more comprehensive information on the different aspects of the Corporate Sector for monitoring and policy formulation. The scope of the standards of disclosure and reporting of data should be improved by including additional variables in the annual reports and the balance sheets of the Companies. Specific recommendations in this regard have been made by the Commission.
