Competition and Fair Trading Commission of Malawi

PCL encourages businesses to proactively comply with competition law

Details: Created on Tuesday, 10 November 2015 15:06

PCL

One of the country’s largest and listed conglomerates, Press Corporation Limited (PCL) has said businesses have to be proactive in complying with the country’s competition laws—the Competition and Fair Trading Act (CFTA) and the Consumer Protection Act (CPA).

Speaking at Game Haven in Thyolo on November 6 2015 during a competition law compliance workshop which was co-organised by Press Corporation Limited and the Competition and Fair Trading Commission (CFTC), PCL Group Operations Executive Designate, John Biziwick said the meeting was informative and he encouraged businesses to be proactive.

“As businesses we need to sensitise all our members of staff about the laws governing competition and fair trading in Malawi to ensure effective compliance,” said Biziwick.

The PCL compliance programme workshop was attended by about 30 top executives from the conglomerate’s subsidiaries including National Bank of Malawi, Malawi Telecommunication Limited (MTL), Telekom Networks Malawi (TNM), Macsteel Malawi, PTC, Carlsberg Malawi, Press Properties, Food Company, Press Cane, Ethanol Company of Malawi, and Puma Energy Malawi.

The CFTC is running a series of compliance programme seminars for individual firms. The objective of the seminars is to sensitize enterprises on the development of competition and fair trading compliance programme and support them to put in place adequate measures to detect and address breach of competition and consumer protection law.

Specifically, the compliance programme aims to reduce the risk of infringing the country’s competition rules, and ensure that commercial agreements and arrangements are structured in a manner that minimises potential competition concerns. The programme also aims to reduce the risk of members of staff engaging in practices that can lead to investigations into suspected anti-competitive behaviour, and it enables enterprises to handle investigations.

In his remarks during the compliance programme workshop at Game Haven, CFTC Director of Mergers and Acquisitions, Richard Chiputula said the authority also learned a number of things through the interaction.

“The workshop was exciting and we have received useful feedback. We are here to help in the implementation of the programme if any company is ready to take it up. We would like companies to implement the programme because we believe it is an investment. It saves government resources and also saves company’s resources by avoiding investigations and litigation,” said Chiputula.

Similar compliance programmes for competition and consumer protection law have already been delivered for the country’s two mobile telephone service providers, TNM and Airtel Malawi, and the country’s largest health insurance service provider, Medical Aid Society of Malawi (MASM).