The Sunday News
Judith Phiri , Business Reporter
THE Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa)’s Competition Commission has achieved milestones in promoting and maintaining market competition in its member states with 17 out of 21 members now having active competition laws and operational national competition authorities.
The competition laws are meant to regulate anti-competitive conduct by companies while promoting trade and fair market practices.
Responding to questions from the Sunday News, Comesa Competition Commission director and chief executive officer, Dr Willard Mwemba said the remaining countries were at an advanced stage of having mechanisms in place to promote competition and protect consumers from anti- competitive behaviour.
“One of the remaining four countries, Uganda is at an advanced stage of promulgating the competition and consumer protection laws. The country however, is one of the first countries to fully domesticate the Comesa Treaty through the Uganda Comesa (Implementation) Act, 2017.
The only remaining countries to have competition laws are Libya, Somalia, and Eritrea. Since the Comesa Competition Commission’s inception, the member states have been actively involved in the examination of mergers notified through us in investigations of restrictive business practices.”
He said these were done by gathering stakeholders’ views, analysing their national markets, monitoring and enforcing the Commission’s decisions in the respective member states.
Dr Mwemba said the Commission deals with cases that have an effect in two or more member states and in executing this mandate, they worked hand in hand with the national competition authorities in prohibiting practices that negate the free movement of goods and services across borders.
“The effectiveness of the Comesa Competition Commission highly depends on the effectiveness of the national competition authorities. Where these are established, we help to technically capacitate such authorities’ staff. We also assist to create a competition culture in the same Member States including through creating awareness of the regulations among business communities, the judiciary, parliament, the academia and the media,” he said.
Competition and Tariff Commission (CTC)
He said for member states without competition laws and or enforcement organisations, the Commission assists such countries in developing their own regulations and in development of the enforcement agency. Dr Mwemba said one particular national competition country they have worked with was Competition and Tariff Commission (CTC) of Zimbabwe.
Following the continuous lamenting of consumers in the country over greed by some private players bent on milking poor consumers through unjustified pricing models, he said CTC must effectively enforce the regulations in the market through investigations and remedying the anti-competitive practices.
“If the laws have weaknesses, there is need for a review or amend them to strengthen the legislation. Where the unfair and unjustified pricing models are perpetuated by regulations or Government intervention, the National Competition Authority needs to strongly advocate with the concerned and relevant regulators and Government departments to remove or amend the anti-competitive clauses of the identified laws.”
