2024-04-02 09:40:49
The Competition Council has an important role to play in monitoring competition in the markets. Providing it with more human and financial resources allows it to strengthen its regulatory power.
This organization has been making headlines for a few weeks. It makes decisions and imposes sanctions affecting various sectors and professional service markets. This is the competition council. Having had a makeover with the appointment of its new members – an appointment that occurred last December following the departure of former president Ridha Ben Mahmoud, whose mandate ended in February 2022 – the council has started again with a vengeance. It quickly took up several alleged cases of anti-competitive practices in various markets. Thus, after temporarily suspending the increase in minimum lawyers’ fees which was decided last January by the ONA, the regulatory authority initiated an investigation into the appointment of auditors and statutory auditors. by public establishments and companies. A second investigation into potentially anti-competitive practices in the canned tuna distribution market has also been opened. And the latest sanction concerns fines with a total value of around 4 million dinars imposed on certain companies active in the hydrocarbon sector. From now on, the Competition Council is active. This should be comforting for consumers who are subject to excessively high prices but also for SMEs who have always suffered from cartel practices and who have suffered from the control of oligopolies over several sectors of activity as well as for young entrepreneurs. who are struggling to break into a locked market. Because the economic environment in Tunisia is not yet conducive to competition, as confirmed by several reports from various international institutions. Tourism, retail banking, telecommunications, the professional services market, distribution… the sectors where competition leaves something to be desired are legion and the reasons for this are multiple: restrictions on competition, excessive regulatory constraints, development of crony capitalism, etc. This is why, in addition to the measures and reforms aimed at promoting competition and the liberalization of the initiative that the government has already undertaken with the launch of the road map for improving the business climate, the Council of the Competition has an important role to play in regulating markets.
Skills advice
In fact, the Council fulfills two functions: a jurisdictional function and a consultative function. Created by Law No. 91-64 of July 29, 1991 relating to competition and prices, supplemented and modified by Law No. 2005-60 of July 18, 2005, the Council is composed of 15 members whose mandates are not renewable. Its budget is attached to the Ministry of Commerce. According to Law No. 2015-36 of September 15, 2015, relating to the reorganization of competition and prices, the Competition Council is called upon to hear requests relating to anti-competitive practices. When it comes to suspicions of this type of practice, the investigation can be triggered either following a complaint filed by a third party or a request for leniency or by self-referral.
During the period from 2016 to 2022, 14 ex officio investigations were opened by the council. Regarding sanctions, it can impose fines on companies of up to 10% of their annual turnover. But the execution of the decisions rendered by the council is the responsibility of the Minister of Commerce. Regarding its advisory function, the council is, according to the 2015 law on competition, obligatorily consulted on draft legislative and regulatory texts tending directly to impose particular conditions for the exercise of an economic activity or a profession or to establish restrictions that could hinder access to a given market. In addition, several public bodies can consult it on questions relating to competition. But the action of this organization remains, according to specialists, limited due to the lack of human and financial resources allocated to it. In this sense, the OECD has issued a set of recommendations, as part of a report published in 2022 following a peer review, recommendations which are likely to support competitive reforms in the country and which concern, between others, the Competition Council. This includes strengthening its mandate and powers and ensuring its independence, notably by clarifying and separating powers with the Ministry of Commerce; strengthen its budgetary and human resources and transfer powers to control concentrations with clearly defined criteria to follow when evaluating these concentrations.
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