Speak­ing on Tues­day, chair­man of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion Pro­fes­sor Patrick Wat­son and act­ing Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Nor­ton Jack, agreed that the new Act will stim­u­late in­vest­ment and strength­en in­vestor con­fi­dence in the lo­cal se­cu­ri­ties mar­ket.

In a joint in­ter­view at the end of the COS­RA meet­ing Wat­son and Jack said the Act, if passed, will al­so give the TTSEC new pow­ers to bet­ter reg­u­late the mar­kets. Asked if they ex­pect there to be an­oth­er Act in an­oth­er few years, giv­en that the Se­cu­ri­ties In­dus­try Act was passed on­ly in 1995, Wat­son said he could not say be­cause "this is a very dy­nam­ic mar­ket." How­ev­er, he said, as Jack nod­ded in agree­ment, the new Act to be laid in Par­lia­ment this week pro­vides for amend­ments to the bye laws of the TTSEC go­ing for­ward.

The COS­RA meet­ing was chaired by Chilean Su­per­in­ten­dent of Se­cu­ri­ties and In­sur­ance Fer­nan­do Colo­ma. Speak­ing to the Busi­ness Guardian dur­ing one of the breaks on the sec­ond day, Colo­ma said the meet­ing was very pro­duc­tive. Dur­ing the first day of the two day meet­ing, he said the COS­RA del­e­gates from all across the Amer­i­c­as dis­cussed the chal­lenges fac­ing the con­ti­nent.

He said: "The chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties in fa­cil­i­tat­ing cap­i­tal fi­nanc­ing for small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs)" was dis­cussed in de­tail. The coun­tries of the Amer­i­c­as are at very dif­fer­ent lev­els of de­vel­op­ment in this re­gard, he said, from the Unit­ed States where the once ju­nior stock ex­change, NAS­DAQ, has over­tak­en the main New York Stock Ex­change (NYSE) to coun­tries where there are none.

He said "an­oth­er im­por­tant one" was the top­ic of "de­vel­op­ments in the cor­po­rate bond mar­kets, how will we en­sure fur­ther cap­i­tal in­vest­ments." In this area too, he said, the Amer­i­c­as are at vary­ing lev­els of de­vel­op­ment. He said that in Chile and the Unit­ed States cor­po­rate bonds are a re­al al­ter­na­tive for pri­vate com­pa­nies who may want to com­ple­ment their eq­ui­ty and loan fi­nanc­ing by is­su­ing 5-10 year bonds.

Colo­ma said too that "in­vestor ed­u­ca­tion" is "a key fac­tor in cap­i­tal mar­ket de­vel­op­ment" and this was the third sub­stan­tive top­ic on the first day of the meet­ing. On the sec­ond day, the del­e­gates went in­to a closed door ses­sion to dis­cuss "to­day's new chal­lenges," he said. Asked what were some of the top­ics, Colo­ma said he did not want to de­feat the pur­pose of mak­ing the ses­sion "closed door" and would on­ly say that "the re­tail forex mar­ket" was dis­cussed.

Ques­tioned whether any de­ci­sions were tak­en to reg­u­late the forex mar­ket, Wat­son said the forex mar­ket is al­ready reg­u­lat­ed by the Cen­tral Bank to some ex­tent. How­ev­er, on di­rect spot trad­ing over the in­ter­net which is now pos­si­ble with­out the knowl­edge of any reg­u­la­tor as clients can open ac­counts on­line with bro­ker­age hous­es, Colo­ma said he did not want to dis­cuss COS­RA's strat­e­gy. He said the meet­ing fo­cused on items to put on the agen­da and "defin­ing the next steps for the or­ga­ni­za­tion."

He said that af­ter the COS­RA meet­ing in Port of Spain, "work­ing groups" to deal with "the con­cerns of our mem­bers" will be formed. The work­ing groups will be or­ga­nized by top­ic in­stead of ge­og­ra­phy.