About 500 real estate agents protested outside the Central Government Offices yesterday against a new licensing fee they said would force many struggling agents out of business. The agents said the fees - $2,300 a year for a salesman's licence and $5,000 for a company licence - were too high. They asked the Government to reduce the salesman's fee to $800 and the company fee to $1,600 to avoid more closures. 'Many agents are only earning a basic salary of about $3,000 to $5,000 a month. If you throw this hefty fee on them, a lot will not be able to stay in the business,' protest spokesman Chau Chi-ming said. Agents said that since the height of the property market in mid-1997, the number of property agents had dropped from 30,000 to 13,000. The number of second-hand flats sold had dropped 60 per cent and sale prices had halved, leading to a 70 per cent reduction in earnings for the industry, agents said. A spokesman for the Estate Agents Authority, which monitors the industry, said most of the agents - 11,500 - had already paid the fees. 'They are able to pay,' the spokesman said. 'Besides, when a special Legco committee met in open session to discuss how much the fee should be, there were few people who raised concerns.' But agents said the fees were set early last year and should be revised to reflect the market downturn. The fees have to be paid by January 1.