Blantyre City Council (BCC) has begun its campaign of closing businesses that have failed to renew their business licences by 31st Mach as earlier warned by the council.
Speaking to YFM, the council’s Director of Commerce, Industry and Trade, BCC achieves 60% in business licence renewal said as of 31st March which was the dateline given to the business community to renew their licence, 60 percent of business people had come forward to renew their licences.
While expressing satisfaction with the response from the business community, Chinsewu has however pointed out that the change in the period of running the financial year is one of the factors which has contributed to the council’s delay to meet its target.
Chinsewu said: “The 60 percent may seem to be on the lower side to other people but for us as a council we are happy taking into account that we are coming from a period where the financial year was running from July to June and it has changed as it runs from April to March, therefore, every change is not easy to embrace.”
The council authorities are targeting to generate over K900 million from business licence renewals in the current financial year.
In the 2021/2022 financial year, the council had a target to renew licences for 7, 125 businesses.
Section 12 of the Business Licencing Act requires every business entity to have a licence in order for it to conduct its business activities.
The licences are renewed every year at the beginning of the new government financial year.
