ISLAMABAD: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) on Thursday re-launched an amnesty scheme, ‘Companies Regularisation Scheme’, to give relief to those companies and their management, which have, in the past, defaulted in the filing of various statutory returns under the Companies Ordinance, 1984.

Previously, such scheme was launched in 2002 and a total of 4,909 companies regularised their defaults under the scheme. It has again been noticed that a large number of companies are not filing the statutory returns in time. Most of the companies have become defaulters due to fear of payment of heavy amount of fee in view of their failure to file multiple returns for successive years, apart from other penalties. To enable the non-compliant companies regularise their successive defaults and encourage them to ensure regular filing in the ensuing years, the scheme had been re-launched. The scheme should remain operative, for a period of forty-five days from May 15, 2009, and should apply to the defaults committed up to December 31, 2008. The scheme would provide defaulter companies an opportunity to file their overdue statutory returns and annual accounts, with normal filing fee, instead of three times additional fee, as otherwise provided under the law. The companies would also be absolved of liabilities arising from the default and no penalty would be imposed on filing of overdue returns and annual accounts. staff report