The business register in Algeria is the Registre du commerce / السجل التجاري (Commercial Register), held by the Centre National du Registre du Commerce — CNRC / المركز الوطني للسجل التجاري (National Centre of the Commercial Register), a public establishment under the Ministry of Internal Trade and National Market Regulation. It is a single national register covering both companies and individual merchants, operated through the CNRC portal Sidjilcom and through local antennas across the wilayas. Its central document, the extrait du registre du commerce, is an authentic instrument that entitles its holder to carry on commercial activity in Algeria.

The company registry in Algeria

The register is governed by the Ordonnance n° 75-59 du 26 septembre 1975 portant code de commerce (Order no. 75-59 of 26 September 1975 on the Commercial Code), Articles 19 to 22, and by the Loi n° 04-08 du 14 août 2004 relative aux conditions d’exercice des activités commerciales (Law no. 04-08 of 14 August 2004 on the conditions for carrying on commercial activities). Registration formalities are set out in the Décret exécutif n° 15-111 du 3 mai 2015 (Executive Decree no. 15-111 of 3 May 2015).

The registering authority is the Centre National du Registre du Commerce (CNRC), placed under the Ministère du Commerce Intérieur et de la Régulation du Marché National / وزارة التجارة الداخلية وضبط السوق الوطنية (Ministry of Internal Trade and National Market Regulation). The register itself is kept in a legally distinctive way: it is initialled and paginated by the judge, and each local antenna is headed by a préposé holding the status of public officer and auxiliary of justice. The CNRC operates through roughly fifty antennes locales / الفروع المحلية (local antennas) that receive applications, keep the local commercial register and deliver extracts; these are territorial service points of one national register, not separate registers.

One register for companies and sole traders

Article 19 of the Commercial Code requires registration of both any natural person having the status of merchant and any legal person that is commercial by form or by object with its seat in Algeria or opening an establishment there. Article 3 of Law no. 04-08 confirms that only one extract of the commercial register is issued for any merchant, whether a natural or a legal person, and Executive Decree no. 15-111 gives each registered person a single unchanging registration number. Algeria therefore has one register for legal entities and individual merchants alike.

Registers kept outside the commercial register

Several activities are registered elsewhere. Under the Loi n° 22-23 du 18 décembre 2022 portant statut de l’auto-entrepreneur (Law no. 22-23 on the status of the self-employed entrepreneur), the registre national de l’auto-entrepreneur / السجل الوطني للمقاول الذاتي (National Register of Self-Employed Entrepreneurs) is kept by a dedicated public body, and holders of the auto-entrepreneur card are exempt from registration in the commercial register. Craft trades are entered in the registre de l’artisanat et des métiers / سجل الصناعة التقليدية والحرف (Register of Crafts and Trades) kept by the chambers of crafts. Article 7 of Law no. 04-08 also excludes agricultural activities, civil companies, non-profit cooperatives and the liberal professions from the commercial register, while public industrial and commercial establishments do register. The CNRC additionally maintains the public registers of sales and pledges of business assets, of pledges of equipment, of movable leasing, and the public register of beneficial owners.

Legal forms that can be registered in Algeria

Article 544 of the Commercial Code, as amended by the Loi n° 22-09 du 5 mai 2022 (Law no. 22-09 of 5 May 2022), declares commercial by their form, whatever their object, the general partnerships, limited partnerships, limited liability companies, joint-stock companies and simplified joint-stock companies. Companies are formed by notarial deed and acquire legal personality only on registration in the commercial register (Article 549). The registrable forms are:

  • Commerçant personne physique / التاجر الشخص الطبيعي (Individual merchant, sole trader) — Articles 1 and 19 of the Commercial Code. Unlimited personal liability; covers both sedentary and itinerant traders.
  • Société en nom collectif — SNC / شركة التضامن (General partnership) — Article 551. All partners have merchant status and are indefinitely and jointly liable; used for small family or professional ventures.
  • Société en commandite simple — SCS / شركة التوصية البسيطة (Limited partnership) — Articles 563 bis and following. Active partners are unlimitedly liable, sleeping partners only up to their contribution.
  • Société à responsabilité limitée — SARL / الشركة ذات المسؤولية المحدودة (Limited liability company) — Articles 564 to 591. Partners bear losses only up to their contributions; the membership is capped at twenty partners. The standard vehicle for small and medium businesses.
  • Entreprise unipersonnelle à responsabilité limitée — EURL / المؤسسة ذات الشخص الوحيد وذات المسؤولية المحدودة (Single-member limited liability company) — Article 564 and Articles 590 bis. A SARL with a single member, whose liability is limited to the contribution; a natural person may be the sole member of only one EURL.
  • Société par actions — SPA / شركة المساهمة (Joint-stock company) — Articles 592 and following. Capital divided into shares, shareholders liable only up to their contributions, with a statutory minimum number of shareholders; used by large enterprises, banks and listed companies.
  • Société par actions simplifiée — SPAS / شركة المساهمة البسيطة (Simplified joint-stock company) — Articles 715 bis 133 and following, introduced in 2022. No minimum number of shareholders and no minimum capital, organisation freely determined by the by-laws, no public offering; the Code reserves it to entities certified as start-ups. A single-member version exists.
  • Société en commandite par actions — SCA / شركة التوصية بالأسهم (Partnership limited by shares) — Articles 715 ter and following. Active partners with merchant status and unlimited liability alongside shareholders liable up to their contributions; rare, used to keep control while raising equity.
  • Groupement / التجمع (Grouping of companies) — Articles 796 to 799 bis 4. Formed between two or more legal persons for a fixed term to develop their economic activity, possibly without capital; it acquires legal personality on registration, and its members remain liable on their own assets.
  • Établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial — EPIC / المؤسسة العمومية ذات الطابع الصناعي والتجاري (Public industrial and commercial establishment) — a State-owned commercial establishment, registered on the basis of its instrument of creation.
  • Succursale, agence ou représentation commerciale d’une société étrangère / فرع أو وكالة أو تمثيل تجاري لشركة أجنبية (Branch, agency or commercial representation of a foreign company) — Article 20 of the Commercial Code and Article 6 of Law no. 04-08. No separate legal personality; the foreign parent remains liable. Registration requires the parent’s by-laws legalised by the Algerian consular services.
  • Coopératives à but lucratif / التعاونيات ذات الهدف الربحي (For-profit cooperatives) — registrable in the commercial register, unlike non-profit cooperatives, which Article 7 of Law no. 04-08 excludes.
  • Locataire-gérant d’un fonds de commerce / المسير الحر للقاعدة التجارية (Lessee-manager of a business) — a registrable status rather than a company form, under which a person operates a business under a notarised management-lease contract in his own name and at his own risk.

One form is deliberately invisible: the société en participation / شركة المحاصة (undisclosed partnership) has no legal personality and, under Article 795 bis 2, is not subject to publicity, so it is never registered.

Information available from the Algerian business register

The statutory principle is broad. Article 16 of Law no. 04-08 provides that any interested person may obtain from the CNRC, at his own cost, the communication of any information concerning a natural or legal person entered in the commercial register.

Publicity is organised through the Bulletin Officiel des Annonces Légales — BOAL / النشرة الرسمية للإعلانات القانونية (Official Bulletin of Legal Announcements), edited by the CNRC. Constitutive deeds, amendments, capital operations, management leases, pledges, sales of business assets, annual accounts and financial notices, resolutions of shareholders’ meetings of joint-stock companies, entries and strike-offs, and judicial decisions on liquidation, bankruptcy or prohibition from trading are all published there. Under Articles 11 and 13 of Law no. 04-08, an entry becomes enforceable against third parties one clear day after publication.

The CNRC portal offers a merchant directory searchable by registration number, name or company name and by wilaya, returning the registration number, the name or company name, the wilaya of the principal establishment, the number of active establishments and the status of the business (active, struck off or lapsed). Further searches cover registered company denominations, the filing status of annual accounts, the nomenclature of economic activities and itinerant traders. Every extract issued since 2014 carries a secure code that can be authenticated online.

Annual accounts are filed with the CNRC within one month of their approval, and Article 717 of the Commercial Code provides that this filing itself constitutes publicity. Joint-stock and simplified joint-stock companies, limited liability companies and their single-member variants, partnerships, banks and financial institutions and public industrial and commercial establishments are covered; branches of foreign companies, groupings and companies in their first year of registration are not.

What is restricted

Detailed register data, the full text of legal announcements and the figures of filed accounts are reserved to authenticated subscribers of the portal; the free interface confirms only the existence and status of a registration and whether accounts have been filed for a given year. Beneficial ownership is the main closed area. The Décret exécutif n° 23-429 du 29 novembre 2023 relatif au registre public des bénéficiaires effectifs (Executive Decree no. 23-429 of 29 November 2023 on the public register of beneficial owners) establishes that register at the CNRC and grants immediate access to judicial and law-enforcement authorities, the financial intelligence unit, supervisory authorities and AML-obliged entities carrying out customer due diligence. Article 3 of the decree makes public consultation conditional on an order of the minister responsible for trade fixing its conditions; no such order could be identified on an official source, and there is at present no public beneficial-owner search on the CNRC portal. Personal data held by the CNRC are also protected under the Loi n° 18-07 du 10 juin 2018 (Law no. 18-07 of 10 June 2018 on the protection of natural persons in the processing of personal data).

Documents that can be obtained from the register

  • Extrait du registre du commerce / مستخرج السجل التجاري (Commercial register extract) — identifies the merchant or company, its registration number, principal establishment, activity codes, legal form and legal representative. Article 2 of Law no. 04-08 makes it an authentic instrument entitling its holder to trade, which is fully binding on third parties until proved false. It may be issued in electronic form.
  • Duplicata de l’extrait / نسخة ثانية من مستخرج السجل التجاري (Duplicate extract) — reissued on loss, theft or deterioration of the original, on the basis of a declaration of loss.
  • Certificat d’existence / شهادة الوجود (Certificate of existence) — confirms that the merchant or company is entered in and exists on the register; used as proof of existence towards third parties.
  • Certificat de radiation / شهادة الشطب (Certificate of striking-off) — confirms that the registration has been cancelled and states the date and ground; used for tax, social-security, banking and court purposes on cessation of business.
  • Certificat de non-inscription au registre du commerce / شهادة عدم التسجيل في السجل التجاري (Certificate of non-registration) — a negative certificate confirming that a given person is not registered as a trader; used for tenders, employment and incompatibility checks.
  • Attestation d’enregistrement de la dénomination / شهادة تسجيل التسمية (Company-name registration certificate) — issued after a search for prior names, in which the applicant proposes several names in order of preference; it records the reserved name for a limited period and is supplied to the notary drafting the by-laws.
  • Copies des documents versés au dossier / نسخ الوثائق المقدمة في ملف التسجيل (Copies of documents in the registration file) — by-laws, amending deeds, appointment minutes and publication notices held by the register; used for due diligence and corporate verification.
  • Insertion au BOAL / النشر في النشرة الرسمية للإعلانات القانونية (BOAL insertion notice) — the legal announcement itself, a compulsory annex to registration and modification files, together with subscriptions to the bulletin in Arabic and French.
  • Attestation de dépôt des comptes sociaux / شهادة إيداع الحسابات الاجتماعية (Certificate of filing of annual accounts) — confirms that annual accounts were filed and published for a given financial year; used as proof of compliance for banks, tax authorities and public procurement.
  • Extraits des registres publics annexes / مستخرجات السجلات العمومية الملحقة (Extracts of the ancillary public registers) — covering sales and pledges of business assets, pledges of equipment and movable leasing contracts; used in secured lending and asset due diligence.
  • Nomenclature des activités économiques — NAE / مدونة النشاطات الاقتصادية (Nomenclature of economic activities) and statistical publications drawn from the register.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the business register in Algeria called?

It is the Registre du commerce / السجل التجاري (Commercial Register), held by the Centre National du Registre du Commerce (CNRC) and accessible through the Sidjilcom portal.

Are sole traders and companies in the same register in Algeria?

Yes. Article 19 of the Commercial Code requires both merchants who are natural persons and commercial legal persons to be entered in the same commercial register, each with a single registration number.

What is the extrait du registre du commerce used for?

It is the core corporate identity document in Algeria. Article 2 of Law no. 04-08 describes it as an authentic instrument entitling its holder to carry on commercial activity, and it is required for banking, tax, customs and contractual purposes.

Can I search Algerian companies online?

Yes. The CNRC portal provides a merchant directory, a company-name database, a search on the filing of annual accounts and a search for itinerant traders. Detailed data and the figures of filed accounts are reserved to authenticated subscribers.

Is beneficial ownership information public in Algeria?

Not in practice. Executive Decree no. 23-429 of 2023 created a beneficial-owner register at the CNRC, but public consultation depends on an implementing ministerial order, and access is currently limited to authorities and AML-obliged entities.

Do self-employed entrepreneurs register in the commercial register?

No. Under Law no. 22-23 of 2022, holders of the auto-entrepreneur status are entered in a separate national register and are exempt from registration in the commercial register.

Sources

Keywords

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