The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) will go on to penalise over 10,000 public and private businesses that failed to re-register before the passed deadline of May 31, 2011.

According to RDB, out of 20,000 companies that were expected to apply for the process, only about 1,500 businesses successfully re-registered.

Louise Kanyonga, the Registrar General of RDB, said that the board will not extend the deadline but implement fines and late registration fees as stipulated by the law on those that did not apply for the process.

"We shall not be extending the deadline because it was provided by law. The penalties for late re-registration are Rwf37, 000 for companies and Rwf6, 000 for individual enterprises,” Kanyonga said.

However, on the RDB official website, visitors expressed confusion about which companies are eligible for the process.

Whereas an announcement on the website calls for only companies that registered before April 27, 2009 to apply for registration, business owners were stunned to learn that the process applies to all businesses including those that registered after the above date.

One known as Kagaba wrote: "Your message is giving a wrong impression to the viewers. It tells us that those who registered companies after April 27, 2009 should not come for re-registration. One employee at RDB has told me that, we should re-register but are exempted from the re-registration fee.”

Kanyonga later intervened to clarify the matter.

"We are indeed re-registering all companies including those who were registered after April 2009. However there is no deadline applicable to those who registered after this period since they are already in compliance with the law,” she responded on the website.

Ends