Competition Commission and fair prices of essentials

Although enacted two years ago in 2012, the Competition Act will shortly have its rules framed for effectively curbing hoarding and 'syndication' in order to help ensure fair prices of essentials. A FE report last Saturday said rules are being drafted to set the planned Bangladesh Competition Commission rolling. The Commission is aimed at stopping collusion, monopoly and oligopoly in the market. But it is yet to be known when the proposed Commission will start functioning and under what terms of reference. However, poor consumers, already reeling under price spiral, are now in anxious wait to see an end to frequent artificial crises of some of the essentials that lead to skyrocketing prices. People of low, fixed and middle income brackets have long been experiencing regular price rises in the markets. Earnings of most of them have surely risen but not on the scale to keep pace with ever-spiralling prices. Family budgets are mostly eaten up by higher food prices, leaving only small amounts to defray housing, educational, medical and other expenses. People are becoming poorer with every passing day. Some of them are also compelled to take recourse to corrupt means only to survive.

Today, people from all sections of society want relief from price hike. As it is understood, the Competition Commission will help to rope in dishonest traders resorting to hoarding and 'syndication'. Such traders run big businesses and may have the clout to paralyse the long hands of law. They have gone on manipulating prices through various means and the governments in power in the past and now, have so far been largely ineffective to counter such evil practices. In this context, the proposed Commission will, at first, have to determine in clear terms what 'hoarding' and 'syndication' should mean. The definitions must be worked out in close consultations with leaders of trading circles as well as chambers of commerce and industry. The 1/11 administration had demolished trading centres in different areas on the excuse of nabbing  hoarders. Price-hike could not be contained then.

On the other hand, anti-hoarding acts and other similar initiatives have been in practice since 1953 and have been implemented on an on-again, off-again basis, depending on when the situation has called for it. More importantly, the laws do not explain how hoarding or unfair pricing is to be determined. These are left to be determined through notification in official gazettes from time to time. This creates the provision for discretionary and variable interpretations, political biases and bureaucratic bungling. This manner of inconsistency and laissez-faire attitude towards market regulation may not be desirable in a developing country like Bangladesh where changes in prices of essential commodities have severe implications on the bread-basket of the majority of the population.

The proposed Commission must have a strong machinery to go down to the grassroots to mainly deal with those who are now making outrageous profits. Such dishonest sections of businesses are found to be going scot-free and they continue to sell commodities at prices they themselves fix at their sweet will. Strict market monitoring in localities must thus be carried out with mobile teams extending deterrent punishment to the wheelers-dealers in business. But doing this will call for an adequate number of inspectors, having integrity, to do it.