Jahangir Bin Alam

There is no denying that Bangladesh, or for that matter any country of the world irrespective of its development status, needs a competitive regime for the benefit of the consumers. In the absence of this, consumers in general, and the less privileged ones in particular, become helpless victims of greedy producers of various goods and services. Hence the necessity of a comprehensive and effective 'Competition Policy'.

The objectives of the competition policy should be -- to regulate monopoly of firms, to motivate competing players to increase their efficiency with a view to retaining their superiority in the market, to weed out inefficient business operations, enhance consumer welfare, maintain a competitive environment to ensure efficient allocation of resources with a view to promoting economic growth, to remove obstacles in the way of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the market and also to prevent multinational companies from abusing their dominant positions in the markets of developing countries, to promote competition by preventing agreements between firms that lead to anti-competitive (monopolistic) behaviour either through explicit or tacit collusion; to protect consumers' interest by ensuring wider choice in terms of price, quality and service and also to prevent unscrupulous firms from undercutting the product prices of honest firms through under invoicing raw material imports, thereby evading due taxes, and to prevent counterfeiting and piracy.

Global context: Out of 149 member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO), 80 have competition policy. Having such a policy for all WTO members still remains a matter of negotiation at the multilateral level.

This is one of the so called 'new issues' in the WTO addressing how domestic and international competition instruments, such as anti-trust or competition laws interact with the international trade regime. In July 2004, the General Council of WTO decided that interaction between trade and competition policy regime (in addition to investment, and transparency in government procurement) would no longer form a part of the Work Programme set out in the Doha Ministerial Declaration and therefore, no work towards negotiation on any of these issues was undertaken by the WTO during the Doha Round.

Bangladesh scenario: The prevalent anti-competitive practices in Bangladesh are -- presence of natural monopolies in the public utilities like: gas and power distribution, water supply and railways; existence of inefficient state owned enterprises (SOEs) and nationalised commercial banks, price and supply manipulation through overt/covert collusion among importers and manufacturers, predatory pricing, creating barriers for new entrants, tied selling, discriminatory/exclusive dealing and bid rigging, undercutting the product prices of honest firms through dubious means, counterfeiting, piracy and plagarism.

Absence of a legal entity to oversee and prevent anti-competitive practices and an effective consumer lobby in the country are reasons for which unscrupulous practitioners are having a hey day at the expense of hapless consumers.

Bangladesh has no competition policy as yet. But, the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practice (Control and Prevention) Ordinance, 1970, though it has not yet been implemented, remains valid until to date. However, initiatives were taken by the government towards formulation of a competition policy after discussions at the 1996 Ministerial Conference in Singapore which was abandoned after the Doha ministerial meet.

It may be noted that in 2004, the then government drafted a law for protection of consumers' rights which was approved by the cabinet for subsequent enactment by the national parliament of the time. But, unfortunately, nothing happened. This law focused on consumers' right to information in respect of quality, quantity, standard and value of goods and services offered by the providers.

In view of the above, and the current behaviour of a section of our business community who are taking consumers for a ride, it has become absolutely necessary that the government take the issue seriously and immediately start doing the needful towards formulation of an effective Competition Policy. The creation of an independent anti-trust authority, with competent people at its helm, who are conversant in this regard is also necessary.

The writer is former Secretary, Foreign Investors' Chamber of Commerce & Industry. He can be reached at e-mail: jbalam44@yahoo.com and

jbalam 44@hotmail.com