The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (TTFTC) is yet to re­ceive a re­sponse from the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) as to the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of its pro­posed fee hike.

TTSEC is propos­ing to more than triple most of the fees that par­tic­i­pants in the se­cu­ri­ties in­dus­try must pay.

The FTC’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and at­tor­ney Be­van Nar­i­nesingh, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, said the TTFTC wrote to the TTSEC on Jan­u­ary 22 seek­ing rea­sons for the hike.

“We wrote in our role as stake­hold­er. They (TTSEC) in­vit­ed com­ments from all stake­hold­ers. We wrote seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion that this is not a vi­o­la­tion of the Fair Trad­ing Act and in­clud­ing how the fees will be utilised.

“... We are not mak­ing any judge­ment against them. What­ev­er they’re do­ing, we trust that it is fol­low­ing prop­er com­pe­ti­tion prin­ci­ples, and if they could ad­vise us on terms of the con­sid­er­a­tions they took in­to ac­count when look­ing at their fees,” Nar­i­nesingh ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he made it clear that, in the past, when­ev­er there was a pro­posed fee hike, the TTFTC wrote to oth­er en­ti­ties like the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd and even the Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) when the price of flour was about to in­crease. The RIC is the reg­u­la­tor of util­i­ties, TCL is the on­ly man­u­fac­tur­er of ce­ment in T&T and the NFM is the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned pro­duc­er of flour, an­i­mal feeds and oth­er prod­ucts.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the TTSEC was in­vit­ed to the TTFTC’s an­nu­al meet­ing of reg­u­la­tors, which took place last Thurs­day at Nicholas Tow­ers, Port-of-Spain.

Nar­i­nesingh said no rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the TTSEC at­tend­ed and no rea­son was giv­en as to why they could not at­tend.

“...It was not a sur­prise that they weren’t there, let’s put it that way. They did in­form us that they would not be at­tend­ing... their staff prob­a­bly are very fo­cused on look­ing at and read­ing the com­ments and as­sess­ing the com­ments that they would have been re­ceived....Our past re­leas­es would show that they would have at­tend­ed most, if not all, of our reg­u­la­tors’ ses­sions.” Nar­i­nesingh said.

Guardian Me­dia sent an email to the TTSEC in­quir­ing why no one at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

No re­ply was giv­en.

Asked whether there is any prece­dent for one reg­u­la­tor tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against an­oth­er reg­u­la­tor Nar­i­nesingh said, “I don’t look at it as bring­ing ac­tion...Be­ing in a spir­it of co­op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion, we were speak­ing to the en­ti­ty to en­sure that what they’re do­ing is in ac­cor­dance with com­par­a­tive prac­tices,” said Nar­i­nesingh, re­it­er­at­ing that what the TTFTC did in writ­ing to the TTSEC is at­tempt to en­sure that the pro­posed fees are jus­ti­fi­able, based on the da­ta and based on the op­er­a­tions of the Com­mis­sion.

On De­cem­ber 17, 2024, the TTSEC post­ed, on its web­site, a cir­cu­lar let­ter to re­port­ing is­suers, bro­ker deal­ers, in­vest­ment ad­vis­ers, un­der­writ­ers and self-reg­u­la­to­ry or­gan­i­sa­tions reg­is­tered un­der the Se­cu­ri­ties Act 2012.

The TTSEC pre­sent­ed a ta­ble com­par­ing the per­cent­age of the op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es from fee rev­enue in 14 ju­ris­dic­tions, in­clud­ing T&T.

It made the point that cur­rent fee rev­enues cov­er about 15 per cent of its op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es, which means the TTSEC re­quires a gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion to cov­er 85 per cent of its op­er­at­ing bud­get.

“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,” from fees, ac­cord­ing to the TTSEC.

Claims of preda­to­ry con­duct

Nar­i­nesingh said the TTFTC re­ceived two in­di­vid­ual com­plaints late last year that cer­tain phar­ma­cies are sell­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals “at very low prices,” which can per­haps equate to preda­to­ry pric­ing.

“...Some of the con­cerns that have come to my at­ten­tion, and what we have seen in the pub­lic do­main in many ways, have been that some of the prices are maybe too low for oth­er phar­ma­cies to ef­fec­tive­ly com­pete. So some­times the ques­tion is why are these prices so low in terms of what some oth­er en­ti­ties are charg­ing and whether that might be a vi­o­la­tion of the Fair Trad­ing Act.

“...We have to de­ter­mine whether that is preda­to­ry con­duct, whether your prices are low, like for in­stance, low­er than your costs, with the long-term in­ten­tion be­ing to dri­ve out your com­peti­tors,” Nar­i­nesingh said.

He added that some en­ti­ties might be charg­ing low­er prices be­cause they buy in bulk and for what­ev­er rea­son, they are able to im­port the prod­ucts at a cheap­er price than some of their com­peti­tors.

De­scrib­ing the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor as “very com­plex,” Nar­i­nesingh said there have been en­ti­ties in the mar­ket for a num­ber of years, much longer than some of the new phar­ma­cies.

“So that may be one of the rea­sons why they have a cer­tain type of mar­ket share, and why they may have ac­cess to, for in­stance, for­eign ex­change at a more ready lev­el than some of their com­peti­tors,” he added.

The FTC will al­so be do­ing work with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­trib­u­tors as well, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion how they op­er­ate.

“How are these dis­trib­u­tors op­er­at­ing? How are their prices be­ing de­ter­mined? And most im­por­tant­ly, how the phar­ma­cies who buy from them look at their con­duct, and whether, in fact, what they are do­ing could amount to some­thing that is an­ti-com­pet­i­tive,” Nar­i­nesingh ex­plained.

On whether the FTC was look­ing at su­per­mar­kets with a view to de­ter­mine whether prices are be­ing un­fair­ly set, Nar­i­nesingh said in terms of the food sup­ply and food dis­tri­b­u­tion, ex­ter­nal fac­tors, and not in specif­i­cal­ly the con­duct of the en­ti­ties in the sec­tor, con­tin­ue to ac­count for some of these high­er prices.