An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Calls are in­ten­si­fy­ing for the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism to ur­gent­ly re­store the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion, as econ­o­mist and for­mer chair­man Dr Ronald Ramkissoon warns that con­tin­ued de­lays are un­der­min­ing the coun­try’s busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment at a crit­i­cal junc­ture.
Ramkissoon, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day with Guardian Me­dia, cau­tioned that the ab­sence of a func­tion­ing com­mis­sion risks erod­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence and weak­en­ing the frame­work for fair com­pe­ti­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly at a time when T&T needs to strength­en its eco­nom­ic re­silience.
“One would have thought the in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion would have made it eas­i­er to do busi­ness when the reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment is not be­ing put in place.

“The reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment is very im­por­tant for every­one, for the com­mer­cial sec­tor as well as for the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

His com­ments came as the min­istry for­mal­ly re­spond­ed yes­ter­day to a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter from at­tor­ney Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal, act­ing for Wen­dell Ever­s­ley and led by Se­nior Coun­sel Stu­art Young, which threat­ens ju­di­cial re­view over the fail­ure to ap­point a board to the com­mis­sion.
In its re­sponse, the min­istry con­firmed that Cab­i­net agreed on Jan­u­ary 29, 2026 to ap­point five peo­ple to the com­mis­sion in keep­ing with the Fair Trad­ing Act.

It added the process is at an ad­vanced stage, with fi­nal­i­sa­tion tak­ing place be­tween the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.
The min­istry al­so in­di­cat­ed it is work­ing to­wards com­ple­tion on or be­fore April 30.
It al­so out­lined the de­lay was linked to a de­tailed vet­ting process, giv­en the spe­cialised and wide-rang­ing func­tions of the com­mis­sion, in­clud­ing merg­er re­view, in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to an­ti-com­pet­i­tive con­duct, and re­fer­rals to re­gion­al com­pe­ti­tion bod­ies.

A re­vi­sion to the orig­i­nal Cab­i­net minute was is­sued last Fri­day, fol­low­ing fur­ther as­sess­ment of prospec­tive ap­pointees.
De­spite those as­sur­ances, the is­sue has al­ready had tan­gi­ble con­se­quences for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as the com­mis­sion was with­out a board for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 months, ef­fec­tive­ly freez­ing its en­force­ment pow­ers.

That paral­y­sis has had rip­ple ef­fects across the econ­o­my, most no­tably in de­layed trans­ac­tions re­quir­ing reg­u­la­to­ry clear­ance.

Busi­ness­es com­plained that over the past few months there re­mains un­cer­tain­ty in ar­eas where over­sight is crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing fair com­pe­ti­tion.
Ramkissoon stressed the com­mis­sion plays a cen­tral role in main­tain­ing bal­ance with­in the mar­ket.
“You have over 130 fair trad­ing com­mis­sions across the world in mar­ket economies. We need to ap­point the com­mis­sion and en­sure that reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies are do­ing what they are sup­posed to do. It is part of get­ting the en­vi­ron­ment right for busi­ness,” he said.

The pre-ac­tion let­ter al­so ar­gued that the pro­longed ab­sence of a board amounts to un­law­ful ad­min­is­tra­tive in­ac­tion and breach­es a statu­to­ry du­ty un­der the Act, which re­quires the com­mis­sion to re­main op­er­a­tional.

It warned that con­tin­ued de­lay risks weak­en­ing com­pe­ti­tion safe­guards, un­der­min­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence, and dis­rupt­ing mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ty.