The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my experience in your newspaper.

Our company is a very small one with a staff count of just one that provide wireless services to customers in New Providence, and the family of islands. We hold a business licence to operate from Inland Revenue.

While our business licence is one that allows us to operate, URCA also saddles us with another licence to operate which they call an operators licence. I always thought my business licence was a licence to operate.

What is more frustrating, every year URCA operating license fees could be three times higher than our original business license from Inland Revenue. Their fee structures is unsustainable for small operators in the sector. Their take it or leave it attitude is not becoming of a regulator.

The way they calculate their fees is boarder line illegal. Here is how they present their fees, they give you an option of paying a flat rate of $3,000.00 annually, or submit your audited financials and they will calculate a fee, and at the end of the day they will use whichever one is higher, either the $3,000.00 or your audited financials.

While we understand that URCA does need to charge something to cover their operational cost, it is our view that the $3,000.00 annually is much too high for small businesses to pay, especially in this COVID environment. The one-man operation in the sector with very little revenue will pay the same as a larger company with far more resources.

My suggestion to URCA would be to review that $3,000.00 ceiling for small companies in the sector. This is the only way to encourage more entrepreneurship into the sector, and give small enterprises a fighting chance.

I will be watching closely to see if URCA takes these recommendations seriously as having meetings with them always end with no meaningful change over the years.

KYLE SHERMAN

Nassau,

October 22, 2021.