Indian corporate sector is coming under more scrutiny than ever with the availability of company documents online. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) website which hosts the company records registered over five million 'company records viewed online' between April and November last year.
The records viewed crossed the 4.4 million views registered in the whole year ending March 2014 and looks set to record thrice the 2 million views registered in the year ending 2012. The numbers were published by the ministry in an e-book released recently. The first edition of the e-book talks about various achievements of the ministry since it was carved out in 2004. The MCA-21 project, which was taken up in the national e-governance plan, is listed as one of the significant achievements of the ministry.
The spectacular jump comes despite the ministry increasing the fee for document views by public to Rs 100 from Rs 50 earlier. The balance sheets and other key corporate filings of companies registered in India are accessible to public through the MCA-21 website of the Ministry of corporate affairs.
The use of the facility for corporate due diligence, analysts and journalists has been on the rise ever since the site became operational in 2006. The documents filed with the portal have been useful for investigators in several scams such as 2-g spectrum and coal blocks allocations that hit the country since.
Over 30 million documents have been filed through the system so far since 2006, according to the ministry. This fiscal alone over 4.4 million balance sheets and an almost equal number of annual returns have been filed by companies in MCA 21.
The MCA 21 system has been serving as the operational backbone for the ministry's service delivery. The portal today has over 0.79 million registered users with 41,000 unique visitors per day and over 4 million hits.
The ministry earns huge fee income and called itself a revenue surplus ministry having clocked revenue receipts of Rs 1,603 crore in FY 14 against total expenditure of Rs 229 crore.
In a significant boost to ease of doing business, the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) is also planning several process improvements in 2015 that will help companies and compliance professionals. "MCA 21 portal is being intergrated with the e-Biz platform and the portals of DGFTand Income tax department to facilitate ease of business. Integration with Pay Gov portal to provide another payment option is also under consideration," the ministry said in the e-book.
The e-book also talked about ministry initiatives such as Serious Fraud Investigation office, Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs and its recent amendments to the company law.
