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Request: Organisation in Pakistan #295

Open jahnvidave opened 5 years ago

jahnvidave commented 5 years ago

Request

What type of organization do you want identifiers for? Foundation

In which countries are the organizations you want identifiers for based?: Pakistan

Do you have examples of organizations you need identifiers for? Engage Foundation for Research and Dialogue

Registered with the Registrar, Joint Stock Companies, under the Societies Registration Act of 1860.

I will send the registration certificate via email to contact@org-id.guide.

jahnvidave commented 5 years ago

Hello, Is there any update on this one? Many thanks, Jahnvi

siwhitehouse commented 5 years ago

Hello Jahnvi

We've been doing some research on this. I'm going to run through it here and then I'll pop the next actions into a separate comment.

Engage is a foundation and the certificate provided shows them registered with the registrar of Joint Stock Companies in Lahore City District.

This appears to be the law that requires the registration with the Registrar of Joint-stock Companies (it is the one named on the certificate).

It is described as An Act for the Registration of Literary, Scientific and Charitable Societies. From the act:

  1. To what societies Act applies.− The following societies may be registered under this Act:-

Charitable societies, [14][ *] societies established for the promotion of science, literature, or the fine arts, for instruction, the diffusion of useful knowledge, [15][the diffusion of political education], the foundation or maintenance of libraries or reading rooms for general use among the members or open to the public, or public museums and galleries of painting and other works of art, collections of natural history, mechanical and philosophical inventions, instruments, or designs.

Engage describe themselves as "Engage Foundation for Research and Dialogue is a research and discourse generation collective"

Unfortunately, the act has nothing to say about the location(s) of the registrar, or whose responsibility it is to be a registrar.

The certificate has a code: RP/9672/L/S/15/216 with the '216' at the end handwritten. It could also be read as '2160'. The registration was made in 2015 and so the end of this code might be in year/increment format. It is also possible that the 'L' stands for Lahore. At the top of the certificate is a 'number' - 'RP/323' which could also be an id.

Org-id currently has two suggested lists for Pakistan:

Org-id currently has one possible list for Pakistan:

Next, taking a look through the research resources from the guide.

Investigative Dashboard shows 3 sources for Pakistan

Wikipedia

World Bank Doing Business http://www.doingbusiness.org/content/dam/doingBusiness/media/Profiles/Regional/DB2019/SA.pdf lists regulatory reforms made from June 2, 2017, to May 1, 2018 and includes the following:

"Pakistan made starting a business easier by enhancing the online one-stop registration system, replacing several forms for incorporation with a single application and establishing information exchange between the registry and the tax authority. This change applies to both Karachi and Lahore."

http://www.doingbusiness.org/en/data/exploreeconomies/pakistan/sub/lahore#DB_sb Describes the procedures for setting up a business in Lahore - again this all refer to registration with the SEC.

OpenCorporates Open Company Index The results of a couple of searches are below: 2538 companies matching engage in the OpenCorporates global registry 21 companies matching engage foundation in the OpenCorporates global registry

Engage Foundation for Research and Dialogue are not one of the 21 companies and none of the 21 are based in Pakistan.

European Commission list of Business registers in Member States Doesn't cover Pakistan

Wiki Procedure https://www.wikiprocedure.com/index.php?title=Pakistan_-_Start_a_New_Business details the procedure for establishing a business with the SEC. It also describes the processes with specific reference to Sindh and Lahore is in Punjab.

Open Corporates policy paper on handling company number problems Doesn't add anything.

siwhitehouse commented 5 years ago

It looks like not all NGOs are 'Voluntary Social Welfare Agencies'. According to http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/pakistan.html CSOs must register 'under any of the four different laws with registration offices in different provinces'.

So, we can think of a number of reasons why we can't find a listing for Engage at https://swd.punjab.gov.pk/system/files/Lahore.pdf

So, we are stuck at this point.

Jahnvi, could you go back to Engage and ask them who their registrar is, please? A url for them would be really helpful. I have tried to find registrars for Joint-Stock companies but with no success.

Also, it isn't clear to us which of the numbers/codes on the certificate is the id. Could you ask Engage for that please? If they know how it is encoded that would be marvelous, although it is not very likely that they will know.

Thanks for your patience. Simon

siwhitehouse commented 5 years ago

Additionally, we will need to amend the entry for http://org-id.guide/list/PK-VSWA if we discover that not all NGOs are required to register with their local Voluntary Social Welfare (VSWA) department.

jahnvidave commented 5 years ago

Hi Simon, Thank you for the update on your extensive research and the clear action points. I have followed up with the organisation with these questions. I will keep you updated of their response. Many thanks, Jahnvi

siwhitehouse commented 5 years ago

We were able to clarify with Engage that

"The registrar is regional and based in Punjab. The Lahore registrar acts on the authority of the provincial government and is responsible for registration under the Punjab Societies Registration Act 1860."

We were unable to find any contact details for anybody at the registrar and Engage do not know how the proposed identifier, 'RP/9672/L/S/15/216' (or'RP/9672/L/S/15/2160') is constructed.

On that basis it has been proposed to DI that an XI-IATI identifier is created.

matmaxgeds commented 5 years ago

@jahnvidave Is it possible to ask Engage if they have a taxpayer number or an exemption certificate, as those are searchable online: https://e.fbr.gov.pk/esbn/Service.aspx?PID=e35mmWrJKMV1u9Kvqk6agw==

jahnvidave commented 5 years ago

Thank you @matmaxgeds for this suggestion. I have asked Engage and will keep you updated of their response.

siwhitehouse commented 5 years ago

Thanks @matmaxgeds

We don't currently have an entry for the Federal Board of Revenue in org-id.

I've downloaded the list of active taxpayers from the FBR site. From that I picked a few numbers at random.

The following number matches its record in the file:

3520297019593

The following don't match and return "No record exists"

3520297015387 3520297016353 3520297018668 3320115344785

I also tried

320115344785 332011534478

Without success - the instruction in the search are to "Type NTN (without check digit)"

I did search the different sheets and didn't get a match for Engage that matched the Foundation for Research and Dialogue.

We'll need to do some more research before we can add the Federal Board of Revenue to org-id. I'll try and do some more research into this later in the week.

Do you know how the NTN is formed?

matmaxgeds commented 5 years ago

Hi @siwhitehouse

That sounds like progress. I also noted that there is a separate Punjab version: https://e.pra.punjab.gov.pk/Registration/onlinesearchTaxpayer.aspx which references PNTNs - unclear if they are the same or different. I does however say that the last digit is a check digit - but in this case seperated by a '-' from the main number.

RE Engage, I have also seen them listed as EFRD in some places - but I guess it is easier to see what comes back from them in terms of a number (if at all), or an exemption certificate (also searchable I think) or perhaps a regional number.

Thanks for the effort with this - if I get some free time, I will see if I can start a list of Tax ID numbers in all countries as I think they are often a good source for unique IDs and are often one of the earlier online digitisations in countries.

siwhitehouse commented 5 years ago

Hi @matmaxgeds

Yes, this does feel like progress. Thanks for your help with this.

From reading the Punjab version of the search it became obvious that the numbers listed under NTN in the active taxpayers file are mainly CNIC numbers. Changing the search "parameter type" to CNIC makes my searches successful, which is pleasing.

The Punjab site also has a contact form and I am going to write to them to ask if they can explain how the NTNs and CNICs are created with a view to establishing that they are stable, persistent and unique.

At the moment we (Open Data Services) really only have enough resource to research individual requests that are coming in such as through Engage. As a community I think we need to look for ways that we can expand this so that we can do more systematic pieces of work, such the Tax ID number research.

If you can make a start on the list of numbers in all countries it would be a big help, as it will help us to get an idea of the size of that as a piece of work. I know we have some tax number registers in Org-id, but I personally don't have a feel for how many there are at the moment.

I've searched the active taxpayers spreadsheet and didn't get a hit on EFRD either, I'm afraid.

Thanks again Simon

siwhitehouse commented 5 years ago

Email sent through contact form at https://e.pra.punjab.gov.pk/ContactUs.aspx

Dear Sir or Madam

I am a researcher for Org-ID.guide, a website that helps organizations and companies locate unique organisational identifiers. I would like to know whether the PNTN and CNIC numbers issued to taxpayers in the Punjab are unique and persistent.

Can you tell me

Thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

Kind regards,

Simon Whitehouse

-

I'll wait for a response, but note that there is a Helpline and a Facebook group too.

jahnvidave commented 5 years ago

Response from Engage:

Engage does not have an exemption certificate. We applied for a taxpayer number and have been waiting for a follow-up.

matmaxgeds commented 5 years ago

Thanks @jahnvidave - that suggests that as soon as they have a TIN, we can take them off the XI-IATI list.

Simon - I wonder if there are ways we can help organisations to do more of this detective work themselves - do you know if there is a guide somewhere (probably on IATI) for the organisation to follow to figure out how IATI can ID them - with an area to suggest things etc so by the time this gets to you it is already much more advanced?

siwhitehouse commented 5 years ago

matmaxgeds - org-id does have a contributors handbook but this isn't aimed at organisations such as Engage. We have regular meetings with colleagues at Development Initiatives and I think that @jahnvidave and myself could raise your suggestion in the next one. I'm relatively new to org-id work and I'm not 100% clear what processes lead to a request coming in to org-id from IATI. Anything that helps organisations to take more control of declaring a unique identifier for themselves is going to be better for them and for us.

matmaxgeds commented 5 years ago

@siwhitehouse that sounds like a good move for sustainability - I am new to this too but will have to register an org in April so hopefully by then can report back on the system