DRAFT BILL
HILARY JOFFE: How the state is also guilty of anticompetitive ethos
Will tightening up SA’s competition legislation to give the authorities greater power to go after large, dominant firms and open up markets to new entrants create growth and jobs? Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel believes it will. So does the ANC, whose December conference resolutions included one on economic concentration that called for measures to expand the mandate of the competition authorities to "deconcentrate levels of ownership in order to open the market to new, black-owned companies". President Cyril Ramaphosa is telling investors that SA is creating more opportunities for market entrants through its competition policies. And the Treasury estimated in its Budget Review that "lowering barriers to entry by addressing anticompetitive practices" could add as much as 0.6 percentage points to the economy’s potential growth rate. But a new diagnostic report from the World Bank suggests that although SA does have a competition problem, changing the competition legislat...
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