Namibia to have competition authority?

AllAfrica reports that the Nambia may finally be getting round to setting up their competition authority this year, at least that’s according to the Permanent Secretary and Minster of Trade and Industry. This is not before time.The Competition Act is No. 2 of 2003. This toolkit from CUTS describes the Act as in many ways resembling the South African Act, and also provides for the establishment of a Namibian Competition Commission.

The article then goes on to describe the creation of the Commission as somehow being related to the conclusion of the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Commission. But there are good reasons for Namibia to improve its competition law enforcement, independently of extra-continental trade agreements. For instance, the South African authority has been extremely active in the prosecution of cartels in recent times. There has been alleged cartel activity and bid-rigging in bread, maize, steel, pipe products, amongst others in the past few years. Given that almost all the companies allegedly involved operate also in Namibia (after all Namibia and South Africa are both in the Southern African Customs Union), it would be surprising if this collusive behaviour did not also extend into Namibia.

This also goes to the possible need for regional approaches to competition law enforcement, discussed in this article in the Business Day in which Nkonzo Hlatshwayo, erstwhile head of M&A at the SA Competition Commission floats the idea of a joint COMESA / SADC regional authority. The progress on these topics has been slow. There has been little indication that there is the real political will to confront some of the sovereignty questions involved in terms of effective regional integration. The last I checked, Swaziland for instance was still a member of SACU, SADC and COMESA, each of which call for a single common external tariff.

In the mean time, while countries decide on which regional groupings to join and how to finalise the EPAs, and what shape domestic competition policy should have, collusive behaviour and other anticompetitive conduct will continue to go unchecked.