The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Wednesday it will meet with various business groups to address concerns on the proposed higher fees and charges for companies.
“The meeting will seek to unite the viewpoints of the commission and its stakeholders toward ensuring that the new schedule of fees continues to advance the Marcos administration’s thrust of promoting business and capital formation in the country,” the SEC said in a statement Wednesday.
It also clarified that the revised schedule of fees and charges, which was released in August for public comments, has yet to be implemented.
It noted that proposed revised schedule of fees and charges was the result of a thorough and careful study by the commission.
The last time that SEC adjusted fees and charges was in 2017 based on a proposal from 2014. This means that the current rates are based on operational and administrative costs prevailing almost 10 years ago, it said.
It said the higher fees and charges would cover certain IT-related services mostly provided through the commission’s newly-launched digital systems such as the SEC Application Program Interface (SEC API) and the Electronic SEC Education, Analysis, Research Computing Hub (eSEARCH).
The adjusted fees and charges also take into account the historical and projected volumes of transactions and data requests to ensure that the collections of the SEC will be sufficient to recover the increasing operating and maintenance costs of the digital services in the coming years, it said.
The SEC said the fees and charges aim t support its efforts in proactively addressing the needs of the corporate sector, by introducing reforms and funding future innovations.
Eleven business groups ealirer expressed opposition to the proposed increases in regulatory fees and charges by the SEC, describing it as money-making schemes in the guise of regulatory enhancements.
The SEC proposed to charge corporate issuers one-fourth of 1 percent of total indebtedness when creating bonded indebtedness.
It also proposed to impose fee on the total transactions cleared and settled in the previous year by Securities Clearing Corp. of the Philippines and Philippine Depository Trust Corp. at 0.1 basis point (bp) and 0.05 bp, respectively.
