Online registration of mortgages and charges becomes operational on MyCO

As of late last week, online registration of mortgages and charges on the new electronic companies’ registry system, Myanmar Companies Online (“MyCO”) has become operational. This is achieved using the prescribed ‘Form H’ to comply with the statutory requirements under Section 229 of the Myanmar Companies Law 2017 (“MCL”), whereby Myanmar companies are required to register with Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (“DICA”) within 28 days of creation of relevant charge. Under Section 235, DICA shall issue a certificate of registration of documents (“CRD”) in respect of such charge registered under Section 229.

Following the entry of MCL into force in August 2018, filings of Forms H was supposed to be done online (a detailed article about which can be accessed here). However, until recently MyCO was operational only to a limited extent, (only re-registration of companies was possible up until now).

With this latest development, not only has registration of mortgages and charges become available online, but furthermore, immediately upon filing of Form H, the CRD should now become available as an automatic download – meaning thereby, the review process by DICA has been done away with and the filing requirement is now of more procedural and technical nature.

Under the old company law regime, registration of charge with DICA would take about a month.  Now, a charge could be registered (and perfected, by issuance of CRD) essentially immediately upon filing online.  This is a long-awaited development and will surely be appreciated by the parties involved in various types of lending and other transactions.