The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) on Wednesday said that it was puzzled and dismayed by calls from the Democratic Alliance (DA) to put the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) under administration.

This came after DA shadow deputy Minister of trade and industry Jacques Smalle on Tuesday called for a forensic investigation at Cipro, to deal with a number of issues.

"The [DA] statement reflects opportunistic obsession with events of the past which Cipro has been responding to for a while now, and is successfully transcending through [a] series of interventions to strengthen administrative controls and close loopholes that are being identified," the DTI stated.

It noted that Cipro's latest intervention had been the call on companies to reconfirm directors on the Cipro database.

The department indicated that the response to this process has been encouraging.

"All of this work, including data-cleansing exercise being conducted with the support of Statistics South Africa, 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," it added.

The commission would take over all functions of Cipro and would be under a new management and leadership structure that would be directly accountable to parliament.