(3)An annual supervisory fee should be charged to credit rating agencies exceeding a certain threshold of turnover in order to provide for budgetary certainty for both ESMA and the credit rating agencies concerned. Annual supervisory fees should not become a burden for new entrants to the credit rating market. Moreover, small credit rating agencies are expected to engender significantly less supervisory costs than larger ones. It would be therefore proportionate to fully exempt small credit rating agencies from paying the annual supervisory fee where the credit rating agency or the group of credit rating agencies to which it belong do not exceed a certain threshold of turnover.