The newly-formed Philippine Competition Commission is set to review existing business mergers and partnerships, its top official said Monday.
PCC chairman Arsenio Balisacan said the government was preparing an assessment paper that would give “the guidance of conduct to a more in-depth analysis of the Philippine business milieu, understanding the problems and crafting measures that will improve competition.”
“From June to August, we will be reviewing all existing business mergers. In about that time also, we will be coming up with a study identifying laws and provisions that are anti-competition,” Balisacan said during a round table discussion organized by the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines.
Telecommunications has been identified as one of the industries that would be looked at.
Balisacan said as the commission identified laws considered anti-competition, the process was more complicated in evaluating whether the inefficiencies stemmed from the players themselves, from the business environment, from policies or from all of them, creating one big anti-competitive climate.
National Competitiveness Council co-chairman Guillermo Luz said the council supported the Commission in identifying obsolete and uncompetitive laws that hindered fair competition among industry players.
“We will be assisting the government in what laws they might be thinking of repealing . They can’t be thinking of new laws when they have not stripped the old laws yet,” Luz said.
Both agencies agreed to allow local government units to create ordinances to create fair and healthy business competition in their own localities.
PCC is speeding up the crafting of the implementing rules and regulations for the Philippines Competition Act. It expects to release the IRR by June 2016. It is looking at both the US and the European Union as model governments in the crafting of the IRR.
The commission is a quasi-judicial body that will enforce and implement the provisions of the competition act, including its implementing rules and regulations.
The IRR is seen to ensure an efficient market competition in providing a level-playing field among businesses engaged in trade, industry and all commercial economic activities.
PCC aims to protect consumer welfare and advance both domestic and international trade and economic development. It has the mandate to conduct inquiries, investigate and penalize all forms of anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominant position and anti-competitive mergers and acquisitions.
