The ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of T&T’s Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (TTFTC), Be­van Nar­i­nesingh, said yes­ter­day that the coun­try’s com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­la­tor in­tends to write to reg­u­la­tor of the do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ties in­dus­try, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC), seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on its pro­pos­al to raise the fees paid by re­port­ing is­suers, bro­ker deal­ers, in­vest­ment ad­vis­ers, un­der­writ­ers and self-reg­u­la­to­ry or­gan­i­sa­tions, such as the T&T’s stock ex­change and its cen­tral de­posi­tary.

The TTSEC sig­nalled, in a let­ter to the in­dus­try post­ed on De­cem­ber 17, 2024, that it is seek­ing to in­crease the fees paid by mar­ket par­tic­i­pants, in many cas­es tripling the amount.

Un­der the TTSEC’s pro­pos­al, the fee paid by a re­port­ing is­suer would in­crease from $8,000 a year, to $24,800 in the first two years, $25,600 in years three to six and $30,000 in year sev­en. Ac­cord­ing to the TTSEC web­site, there are 97 re­port­ing is­suers in the coun­try. In 2024, those 97 re­port­ing is­suers would have paid $776,000 in fees to the TTSEC. If the fee in­crease pro­pos­al is ap­proved, those re­port­ing is­suers would pay $4.8 mil­lion over the next two years.

The TTSEC al­so pro­pos­es to in­tro­duce new fees for com­pli­ance re­views, ex­am­i­na­tion of mar­ket ac­tors and the cost as­so­ci­at­ed with an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Un­der the pro­posed fee in­crease, a di­rec­tor’s fee for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be $566 an hour, a se­nior fi­nan­cial re­search of­fi­cer would cost $472 an hour and the cost of a fi­nan­cial re­search of­fi­cer would be $327 an hour.

Nar­i­nesingh said the TTFTC was alert­ed to the TTSEC’s pro­posed fee in­creas­es by the com­men­tary of the Guardian’s con­sul­tant busi­ness ed­i­tor, An­tho­ny Wil­son, in yes­ter­day’s Busi­ness Guardian head­lined ‘Is the TTSEC abus­ing its mo­nop­oly pow­er?’ Wil­son al­so wrote a col­umn head­lined ‘Are TTSEC’s pro­posed fee hikes jus­ti­fied?’ in the Busi­ness Guardian of Jan­u­ary 9.

Nar­i­nesingh said the FTC is in the process of con­duct­ing its own re­search on the pro­posed fee in­creas­es.

He said it is giv­ing con­sid­er­a­tion to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the TTSEC’s con­sul­ta­tion process by sub­mit­ting a com­ment on the is­sue be­fore the Jan­u­ary 24 dead­line.

“We are close­ly ex­am­in­ing the op­er­a­tions of the TTSEC to de­ter­mine if it is an ‘en­ter­prise’ for the pur­pos­es of the Fair Trad­ing Act. This is what we need to do first and fore­most as part of our en­force­ment work,” said Nar­i­nesingh.

He said it would be pre­ma­ture for TTFTC to make any abuse-of-mo­nop­oly de­ter­mi­na­tion be­fore es­tab­lish­ing that the TTSEC is an ‘en­ter­prise’ for the pur­pos­es of the Fair Trad­ing Act. The Act de­fines en­ter­prise as an in­di­vid­ual, part­ner­ship or body (cor­po­ra­tor in­cor­po­rate) en­gaged in busi­ness.

“We must al­so then ex­am­ine the pro­posed fee struc­ture, the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the pro­posed in­creas­es and the back­ground re­search, all of which we will seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion on in our com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the TTSEC and which will then guide the com­ments we will sub­mit as part of the con­sul­ta­tion process,” said Nar­i­nesingh.

In its overview of the fee-in­crease pro­pos­al, the TTSEC states, “This fee re­vi­sion ex­er­cise rep­re­sents a cul­mi­na­tion of work in which the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion eval­u­at­ed the im­pact of the pro­posed fees on both its op­er­a­tional ob­jec­tives and on mar­ket ac­tors and reg­is­trants whom we reg­u­late.

“The pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive of this ex­er­cise is to al­low the Com­mis­sion to re­cov­er the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight and en­hance its abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly meet its reg­u­la­to­ry man­date with­out over­bur­den­ing mar­ket ac­tors and reg­is­trants.”

In at­tempt­ing to jus­ti­fy the fee in­creas­es, the TTSEC presents a ta­ble com­par­ing the fees charged by 13 reg­u­la­tors around the world with those charged by the TTSEC.

“With the ex­cep­tion of Sin­ga­pore (18 per cent), all the oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions were able to cov­er be­tween 70 per cent and 100 per cent of their re­spec­tive op­er­at­ing bud­gets,” while the TTSEC’s fees cov­er about 15 per cent of its op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es.