RE: the dti's RESPONSE TO DA'S CALL TO PUT CIPRO UNDER ADMINISTRATION

The Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) has noted with puzzlement and dismay  the Democratic Alliance's media statement of 12 October 2010, ‘Cipro scam: DA calls for immediate investigation", in which the DA calls for a forensic audit and putting Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (CIPRO) under administration (see here).

The statement reflects opportunistic obsession with events of the past which CIPRO has been responding to for a while now, and is successfully transcending through series of interventions to strengthen administrative controls and close loopholes that are being identified. The latest intervention is the recent call on companies to reconfirm their directors on the Cipro database, to which the response is encouraging, according to CIPRO

All of this work, including data-cleansing exercise being conducted with the support of Statistics SA, the results of which will be released shortly - is part of the ground work for the establishment of Company and Intellectual Property Commission in terms of the new 2008 Companies Act.

The Commission will take over all the functions currently residing with CIPRO, and will be under an overhauled management and leadership structure which will be directly accountable to parliament. CIPRO will consequently cease to exist. The DA has been engaging the dti and is fully apprised of these matters and the dti's modernisation agenda for this area.

The Department is thus puzzled and dismayed by the DA's alarmist statement, and can only attribute it to the fact that the new Shadow Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Jacques Smalle is not properly briefed. 

Statement issued by Sidwell Moloantoa Medupe, Communication and Marketing, Department of Trade and Industry, October 13 2010

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