PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher

@guardian.co.tt

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

The Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC) has not been able to make en­force­ments for the past eight months due to the ab­sence of its board.

FTA ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Be­van Nar­i­nesingh said the com­mis­sion has been ac­tive in the board’s ab­sence, but it was lim­it­ed in that re­gard.

“That’s sep­a­rate, that will be a de­ci­sion by the Gov­ern­ment. But at the end of the day, the com­mis­sion has con­tin­ued its work for the last eight months with­out a board. Our work has been very fo­cused on ad­vo­ca­cy as well as pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion. So, the area that we haven’t been do­ing, ob­vi­ous­ly, is the area of en­force­ment, be­cause you would need a board to bet­ter car­ry out that area of our man­date,” said Nar­i­nesingh, at the Com­mis­sion’s Sixth Meet­ing of Key Reg­u­la­tors of Trinidad and To­ba­go at Nicholas Tow­ers yes­ter­day.

“We are not do­ing any en­force­ment now in the ab­sence of a board, but our en­force­ment work al­so in terms of re­view­ing the mar­ket, pos­si­bly tak­ing ac­tions against abuse of dom­i­nance, as well as merg­er re­view and things like that,” he clar­i­fied when asked about the FTC’s ef­forts in the board’s ab­sence.

The ab­sence of the FTC has been felt on the na­tion­al busi­ness land­scape, most no­tably with re­gard to the Agos­ti­ni’s planned takeover of the restau­rant man­age­ment busi­ness Pres­tige Hold­ings’ Ltd via a share swap deal. On Tues­day, Agos­ti­ni ex­tend­ed the fi­nal date for the ap­proval of the trans­ac­tion to March 6 to al­low for nec­es­sary ap­provals, in­clud­ing that of the FTC. Since the deal was an­nounced in June last year, the ac­qui­si­tion’s fi­nal date has been ex­tend­ed six times.

Nar­i­nesingh al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about a mo­nop­oly in­flu­enc­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which was raised by pres­i­dent of the Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (PPR­BA), Glen­wayne Su­chit in a Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) hear­ing in De­cem­ber.

One the com­pa­nies point­ed to dur­ing that hear­ing, the Agos­ti­ni group post­ed a no­tice stat­ing the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor is reg­u­lat­ed and com­pet­i­tive, with more than 70 reg­is­tered dis­trib­u­tors sup­ply­ing med­i­cines across T&T.

Nar­i­nesingh, how­ev­er, ex­plained that giv­en the size of the lo­cal econ­o­my, there would be mo­nop­o­lies in var­i­ous sec­tors. He said the FTC, how­ev­er, was tasked with in­ves­ti­gat­ing if the mo­nop­o­lies were un­fair­ly abus­ing the mar­ket.

“Hav­ing a mo­nop­oly it­self is not il­le­gal, it’s the abuse of mo­nop­oly. So that is what our fo­cus has been on. Even if there is a mo­nop­oly, the is­sue is whether this mo­nop­oly is be­ing abused, and there are a num­ber of ways in which a mo­nop­oly en­ti­ty that pos­sess­es mo­nop­oly pow­er could be abus­ing that pow­er, and that is re­al­ly what the is­sue is right now,” he said.

The FTC ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor said be­cause of the size of the T&T econ­o­my, there would in­evitably be mo­nop­o­lies, not on­ly in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in oth­er ar­eas.

“But the is­sue re­al­ly is whether this mo­nop­oly is be­ing abused, and that’s why the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion needs to al­so hear from stake­hold­ers, so that they could give us ex­am­ples of where they be­lieve pos­si­ble abuse is hap­pen­ing. We can­not do it alone.”

Ear­li­er in the meet­ing, the act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, Abi­gail By­noe, said she hoped the meet­ing would help de­vel­op strate­gies to push ex­ports from the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.