Which regulator does what: a map of Pakistani business registration

Pakistani business regulation is not one system. It is a set of independent registers, each with its own statute, portal, fee schedule and calendar, none of which talk to each other. A business can be perfectly compliant with one and in default with three others, and nothing in any portal will tell it so.

This guide maps who does what, so you can work out which registers actually apply to you — and then go to the specific guide for each.

Registering the entity

The structure decision comes first because it determines which register you use, and it is not purely a tax question — ownership, liability, financing and governance all bear on it. Work through sole proprietor versus AOP versus company before filing anything, then SECP incorporation or the Registrar of Firms for your province.

Tax: the federal and provincial split

This is where most newly registered businesses discover they have more than one regulator. The 18th Amendment split sales tax by subject matter:

• FBR — income tax for everybody, and sales tax on goods. Registration, filing and the Active Taxpayer List run through Iris.
• SRB (Sindh), PRA (Punjab), KPRA (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), BRA (Balochistan) and the authority for Islamabad Capital Territory — sales tax on services, each with its own statute, rate schedule, portal and return.

A business supplying both goods and services, or operating across provinces, can hold several registrations and file several monthly returns. Start with sales tax registration to identify which regime governs your supplies, then the provincial guide that applies — Punjab or Sindh. The distinction between an STRN and an NTN trips up enough people to be worth reading separately.

IPO-Pakistan: four different rights, one organisation

The Intellectual Property Organization of Pakistan, established by the IPO-Pakistan Act 2012, sits over registries that people routinely conflate. Each protects something different and none substitutes for another.

Two of these are lost by publishing first. Patents and registered designs both require novelty, so a product launched, exhibited or posted online before filing is generally unprotectable. Trademarks and copyright are not time-barred in that way. If you are launching a product, the patent and design filings belong in the pre-launch checklist; the trademark can follow, though earlier is safer.

Sector regulators: the ones that decide whether you can trade at all

Sector licensing is categorically different from tax registration. Missing a tax registration creates a financial exposure. Missing a required licence can mean you are not permitted to do the work, which invalidates contracts and disqualifies bids.

• PEC — Pakistan Engineering Council. Registers individual engineers as Registered Engineers and Professional Engineers, and separately licenses constructor, operator and consulting engineer firms by category. PEC states that an engineer cannot undertake professional engineering work unless registered. See PEC registration for engineers and the PEC firm licence.
• PSEB — Pakistan Software Export Board. Registration for IT and IT-enabled services exporters, which is generally a condition attached to sector concessions rather than a licence to trade. See PSEB registration.
• EOBI — Employees Old-Age Benefits Institution. Employer registration and monthly contributions once the workforce reaches the prescribed threshold. See EOBI registration and contributions.
• Provincial social security and labour departments — separate from EOBI, with their own registrations and contribution rates by province.
• PPRA and its provincial equivalents — public procurement rules, relevant if you bid for government work.
• Activity-specific bodies — financial services, health, education, food, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and import or export each have their own regulator, and those obligations sit entirely outside anything covered here.

The name problem

Three registers test a business name against three different standards, and none of them consults the others:

1. SECP applies company-name rules — availability, restricted and regulated wording, and whether the name misrepresents the activity. A clear search result is screening evidence; the Registrar decides.
2. IPO applies the trademark test — whether the mark conflicts with an existing registration in the relevant class. A company can be lawfully incorporated under a name it cannot lawfully trade under as a brand.
3. PEC checks firm-name availability where an engineering licence is involved, and directs applicants to change the name if it is not available.

Clear the name across every register that applies before letterhead, signage, packaging or domain registration. The cost of doing this in the wrong order is a company name change at SECP plus the rebranding, against a clearance search that costs almost nothing.

None of these calendars align

This is the practical reason compliant businesses still end up in default. The cycles are genuinely independent:

The only control that works is a single compliance calendar holding every date for every regulator in one place, reviewed monthly. Businesses that keep the tax calendar in the accountant's head and the licence dates in a folder are the ones that discover a lapsed licence during a tender. Start from the startup tax and compliance checklist and the SECP annual filing calendar, then add the sector dates that apply to you.

Working out which ones apply to you

Four questions settle most cases:

1. What structure are you in? Company or LLP means SECP. Partnership means the Registrar of Firms for the province of your principal place of business. Either way, FBR.
2. Do you supply goods, services, or both? Goods means FBR for sales tax. Services means the provincial authority where the service is supplied. Both means both.
3. Is your activity licensed? Engineering means PEC. Regulated financial, health, education, food, pharma and telecom activities mean their own bodies. Check before you contract, not after.
4. Do you have something worth protecting? A brand, an invention, a product appearance or a body of creative work each point to a different IPO registry — and two of the four are lost by launching first.

Source check: 14 September 2026. The division of responsibilities described here reflects the regulators' own published descriptions of their functions. This is an orientation guide: it identifies which body handles what, not whether any particular registration is required for your business. Registration requirements, thresholds and calendars change, and sector licensing in particular turns on the specific activity — confirm your own position with each regulator or take advice before relying on this map.

Sources

This guide is written against the official and clearly labelled professional references below. Rates, thresholds and portal procedures change between reviews, so open the primary source before relying on a figure.

• SECP: company registration
• FBR: taxpayer registration basics
• IPO-Pakistan: Intellectual Property Organization of Pakistan
• Pakistan Engineering Council: frequently asked questions
• PSEB membership benefits

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