DICA releases draft Category H forms for registration of matters relating to mortgages and charges

In preparation for the launch of the new electronic companies’ registry system, Myanmar Companies Online (“MyCO”), the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (“DICA”) is preparing a set of prescribed forms to collect the information required to be submitted to the Companies Registrar under the Myanmar Companies Law 2017 (“MCL”).

In order to raise public awareness, DICA has on 14 June 2018 released draft forms for different aspects of corporate matters, including draft Category G for registration of matters relating to public companies, draft Category E for registration of matters relating to overseas corporations and draft Category H for registration of matters relating to mortgages and charges. 

At present Form MC-1 is used for registration of mortgage or charge, however there exists no prescribed form for modification of charge, satisfaction of charge and the like. This is remedied by the introduction of a slew of new forms under the category of Form H (1-9) for matters related or ancillary to the registration of mortgages and charges. While Form H-1 pretty much correlates to the existing Form MC-1 for registration of mortgage or charge, there are plenty of new aspects hitherto uncovered. These are as follows: 

Presently, registration of charge is only possible by filing an application in Form MC-1 with DICA which takes about a month. It remains to be seen how quickly a charge is registered under the new system filing online, but it is widely expected to be much quicker than the existing process.

Of particular interest are the provisions relating to receivers. In practice thus far, a court order is required to appoint a receiver, regardless of the fact that under section 240 of the MCL, parties are free to do so without court intervention. Form H-4 seems to render the process of court intervention for appointment of receiver unnecessary, making things much more streamlined.

All told, the initiative to introduce the new draft category H forms is a welcome step from DICA and it is expected that once the system goes live, it will go a long way in facilitating ease of business.