PM stresses competition culture for trade growth
ISLAMABAD, Dec 2 (APP): Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani on Friday stressed mainstreaming the culture of competitiveness in businesses to prevent market failures, cartelization and abuse of dominance.He was addressing the international conference on ‘Competition Enforcement: Challenges and Consumer Welfare in Developing Countries’ organized by Competition Commission of Pakistan and UASAID’s Consumer Support Fund here.Gilani said to ensure competitive environment, the role of governments was to create enabling conditions for businesses to operate with maximum ease.
He said the emergence of integrated markets had spurred competition and the number of countries having competition laws and competition agencies had increased from a handful in 1990 to more than 120 today.
 He said the competition laws must reflect national priorities and take national peculiarities into consideration.
He said the government’s main priority was economic development of the country, the ability to provide goods and services to our people at affordable prices, and to create better opportunities for their livelihood.
 Gilani said people’s expectations from the democratic government were understandable and justified. He mentioned that for two years in a row, floods, energy and security situation had slowed down the economic growth.
 He said due to timely interventions of the government, the country had been able to build strong economic fundamentals.
 He said the nation had shown remarkable resilience in the face of these challenges and added that exports were all time high with Pakistan becoming a wheat exporting country.
 He said the country’s foreign exchange reserves were at comfortable level and said foreign remittances were more than 11 billion dollars.
He quoted Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who once said, “A strong competition policy is not just a luxury to be enjoyed by rich countries.”
 Gilani said in 2011, the government released the New Growth Framework after taking the relevant stakeholders into confidence.
 He said the Framework document underscored the importance of competitive markets as an element of economic governance. It also identified competitive markets as the starting point towards increasing efficiency and bringing about innovations to promote and sustain economic growth.
 He called for allowing the markets to determine optimal allocation of resources and said incentives needed to be given for innovation and entrepreneurship because the government should not be the sole driver of economic growth or job provider.
 He said building the culture of competition and an effective competition regime is a long-term endeavour and said it must be ‘mainstreamed’ in all sectors.
 Gilani said there was a need to overcome the fear of an opposition to competition by emphasizing its benefits and by creating a good pro-investment climate.
Thus, pro-competition policies must not only be well constructed but duly maintained to guard against anti-competitive behaviour in the market, he added.
 He said promotion of competition culture needs a strong and independent institution capable enough to point out when and where competition is being compromised or vested interests are working against economic growth.
He said the democratic government supported the passage of the law through the Parliament, and would focus attention on providing the Commission a secure source of funding to carry on its important work.
 Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh lauded the work being done by the Competition Commission of Pakistan saying that the institution will be further strengthened to work towards a competitive economy.
The right policies and level playing field were required for achieving the target of a stable economy.
 Richard Albright, Coordinator for Economic and Development Assistance, US Embassy said there was a need to mobilize all the resources in an effective way and discouraging monopoly of companies.
 CCP Chairperson, Rahat Kaunain Hassan in her opening remarks highlighted key areas of competition law enforcement, advocacy and the challenges faced by CCP in implementing competition law.