Chair­man of the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion, Dr Ronald Ramkissoon, says the agency prides it­self as the van­guard for com­pe­ti­tion law and pol­i­cy in T&T and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), de­vel­oped a Guide to the Fair Trad­ing Act, Ch.81:13.

Speak­ing at the launch of the guide yes­ter­day Ramkissoon said the in­ten­tion is to bet­ter en­sure that con­sumers and busi­ness­es are pro­tect­ed from an­ti-com­pet­i­tive ac­tiv­i­ty and abus­es of mar­ket pow­er. The guide al­so ad­dress­es oth­er as­pects of com­pe­ti­tion law and pol­i­cy such as in­dus­try struc­tures (mo­nop­o­lis­tic and oli­gop­o­lis­tic mar­kets) and mar­ket con­duct (such as tied sell­ing and preda­to­ry pric­ing) the ob­jec­tive be­ing to pro­vide stake­hold­ers with a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of pro-com­pet­i­tive eco­nom­ic and busi­ness prin­ci­ples.

Ramkissoon al­so not­ed that the FTC re­mains com­mit­ted to shap­ing and en­forc­ing T&T’s lo­cal com­pe­ti­tion law and pol­i­cy and in do­ing so, aims to fos­ter a col­lec­tive, re­silient and eco­nom­ic in­clu­sive coun­try that fa­cil­i­tates com­pet­i­tive out­comes which are es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant to de­vel­op­ing na­tion thrust.

“The fos­ter­ing of a cul­ture of com­pe­ti­tion by the FTC is made ev­i­dent through the FTC’s ro­bust ad­vo­ca­cy work which has sought to pro­mote a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go pre­dom­i­nant­ly through the uti­liza­tion of non-en­force­ment mech­a­nisms to build re­la­tion­ships with key stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and gov­ern­ment en­ti­ties; and by in­creas­ing pub­lic aware­ness of the ben­e­fits of com­pe­ti­tion,” Ramkissoon said.

This, he added, has cer­tain­ly been the or­der of the day for the FTC since its es­tab­lish­ment in 2014 and has con­tin­ued af­ter the FTA’s full procla­ma­tion in 2020.

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the FTC, Be­van Nar­i­nesingh, who al­so spoke not­ed the im­por­tance of guides to com­pe­ti­tion leg­is­la­tion.

“Guides pro­vide prac­ti­cal ‘how-to’ in­for­ma­tion to en­able com­pli­ance with com­pe­ti­tion leg­is­la­tion. It is of in­es­timable val­ue to pro­fes­sion­als in this area of prac­tice as well as the gov­ern­ment, the Ju­di­cia­ry, con­sumers, busi­ness­es, acad­e­mia, in­vestors and econ­o­mists alike,” Nar­i­nesingh said.

He said they al­so pro­vide clear ex­pla­na­tions of com­plex con­cepts and is in­tend­ed fos­ter a sound un­der­stand­ing of the le­gal prin­ci­ples of com­pe­ti­tion law and pol­i­cy.

About the TTFTC

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (TTFTC) was es­tab­lished as an in­de­pen­dent statu­to­ry agency fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the Fair Trad­ing Act in 2006.

But the in­sti­tu­tion did not be­come op­er­a­tional un­til Ju­ly 2014, eight years lat­er, when the first four com­mis­sion­ers of the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (FTC) re­ceived their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment from then Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try, In­vest­ment and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Vas­ant Bharath.

The first com­mis­sion­ers of the TTFTC were re­tired High Court judge Am­ri­ka Ti­wary-Red­dy, re­tired Re­pub­lic Bank econ­o­mist, Ronald Ramkissoon, eco­nom­ics lec­tur­er Anne Marie Mo­hammed and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Be­van Nar­i­nesingh.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTFTC web­site, the cur­rent com­mis­sion­ers of the TTFTC are: Ronald Ramkissoon, Don­ald Mar­tineau, Dawn Cal­len­der, Den­nis Scott, Gabrielle Gellineau

It was the third com­pe­ti­tion agency es­tab­lished in the CARI­COM re­gion.

The ob­jec­tives of the TTFTC are to:

* En­sure that all le­git­i­mate busi­ness en­ter­pris­es have an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the econ­o­my;

* Pre­vent An­ti-com­pet­i­tive con­duct while at the same time com­ple­ment­ing oth­er poli­cies that pro­mote com­pe­ti­tion;

* Main­tain and en­cour­age free and fair com­pe­ti­tion;

* Raise aware­ness of the ben­e­fits of com­pe­ti­tion through ad­vo­ca­cy;

* Pro­vide guid­ance on how to com­ply with the law.