This is according to Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa who was speaking during a briefing on the Programme of Action for government's economic, investment and employment cluster.
He said that continuing efforts by government to address anti-competitive behaviour would see changes to competition law, which will allow the state to deal with anti-competitive outcomes in a more vigorous and pro-active manner.
The department will be taking this draft legislation through cabinet shortly, before introducing it to parliament, Mpahlwa said.
The draft legislation intends to strengthen the competition authorities, namely the Competition Commission and the Competition Tribunal, overall.
Amended legislation would create areas for the competition authorities to get more involved in investigations and create space for greater intervention where necessary, the Minister said.
Government intends becoming “a lot more vocal” around issues of competition, said Mpahlwa, adding that South Africa had seen “enough evidence” of anti-competitive behaviour in the recent past.
Apart from recent developments around alleged price-fixing or price-administering of various products that have been widely reported in the media, the matter of import parity pricing – where local producers of commodities maintain prices at international, or import, levels – is seen as a target for this legislation.
Work towards strengthening the competition authorities in a manner that will also see them becoming less reactive, and more engaged, is to be linked to ongoing work aimed at finalising a framework for economic regulators, reporters were told.
In addition, government will be broadening a process that began last year to review and benchmark existing regulatory requirements for doing business, while initiating a process to ensure that regulation in the economy is sufficient but not onerous.
A national assessment of the performance of economic regulators in the South African economy is to be finalised in April this year, and this study will inform the framework for regulators going forward.
As such, government will be striving to attain a balance where it does not regulate “too much”, but rather regulates “right”.
This would involve greater interaction by government with the players concerned, be these consuming industries or the producers themselves, the minister indicated.
However, government will “remain seized”, with the issue of import parity pricing, which has been blamed on distorting or stunting the development of downstream industries dependent on materials such as steel, which many market observers argue is over-priced.
In terms of the ability to promote downstream manufacturing, this import parity pricing has become of sufficient concern to warrant greater regulation and interaction and government would “not let up” on the issue, said Mpahlwa.
At the same time, government is looking at reducing the costs of production for many industries by the removal of “unnecessary” tariffs, said the minister.
Areas targeted for possible tariff removal or reduction include steel and chemicals.
Meanwhile, the matter of food pricing is to receive greater attention from the competition authorities and at the wider level of government, particularly where there is evidence of “administered pricing”, said the Director-General in the Department of Trade and Industry.
Tshediso Matona said his department, the Department of Agriculture and the National Treasury were all looking at the matter, and were meeting to consider what action could be taken.
Article published courtesy of BuaNews
