Regional watchdog needed to ensure fair competition

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Bali

In a bid to help ensure fairer business competition practices within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies, an European expert has urged the Southeast Asian regional grouping to set up a special competition body.

Wolfgang Kartte, an expert from Germany, said that a commitment to develop a free market within the region was not enough to ensure a fair business competition environment that would benefit consumers.

"You need somebody to look into competition practices," he said on Friday on the sidelines of the ASEAN conference on the fair competition law and policy.

He urged ASEAN members to seriously fight corruption, the most serious obstacle in ensuring fair business competition.

"Corruption and competition barriers are the worst enemy against the free market economy," Kartte said.

He added that the establishment of a competitive environment would take time.

"We (in the European countries) need twenty years to ensure our member countries and people about the benefits of the competition law and policy. It requires time and patience," he said.

"The economic development status of the individual ASEAN countries still also varies widely. That's why it is very important to maintain dialog and exchange experience and information among ASEAN member countries," he said.

The two-day conference, sponsored by the World Bank and Germany's Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit GmbH, was aimed at developing a common understanding among the member countries of the regional grouping about the need to set up a business competition law and policy.

At the end of the conference, the participants agreed in principle to establish a consultative forum for developing a competition law and policy.

"Participants from ASEAN countries have in principle agreed to adopt the competition law and policy. They have also agreed to set up a consultative forum," Soy Pardede, the vice chairman of Indonesia's Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU), said after the meeting.

Ong Keng Yong, the secretary-general of ASEAN, said that a scheduled ministerial meeting in April would discuss the issue of adopting a competition law and policy.

So far, only Indonesia and Thailand have enacted an Antimonopoly law.

Meanwhile, Philippe Brusick, a senior official from UNCTAD, said that each country needed its own tailor-made competition law and policy.

"It is not possible to copy the existing competition law from developed countries as there is a difference in economic development," he said.

"The less-developed countries need the right mix between government intervention and a competition policy to correct market failures," he said.

The six original member countries of ASEAN -- Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand -- have slashed import tariffs on almost all products traded in the region to below five percent since the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) went into full effect early this year.

But there are still attempts being made to adopt a nontariff trade barrier in a bid to help protect local manufacturers from cheaper imported products.

The four newer members of ASEAN -- Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar -- are allowed to delay tariff reductions until 2010.