PCC expects ‘deluge’ of anti-trust cases

Antitrust watchdog Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) is seeking an increase in its personnel with the full effect of the Philippine Competition Act (PCA) after a two-year provided in the law ended last August.

PCC chairman Arsenio Balisacan said the agency is bracing for a “deluge” of complaints on monopolies, cartels and other anti-competitive practices with the full effectivity of the law.

Balisacan said the PCC has proposed to the Office of the President an additional 140 items especially in the enforcement which will be made up mainly by lawyers and economists who already make up the bulk of the agency’s roughly 135 positions.

At present, the PCC may only hire around 200 personnel but the law allows an adjustment.

“As the public gets to know more of us, we will likely be deluged with cases, so I need to prepare well for that, I need to increase the enforcement,” he added.

The PCA was passed in 2015 ending 25 years of lobbying by business groups against the anti-trust bill which was first filed in the early 90s.

Balisacan, an economics professor and former President Aquino’s socioeconomic secretary, sees the competition law through the lens of development economics.

“The big puzzle for us was why wasn’t poverty reduction responding well to the growth. Obviously, it became apparent that a good part of the growth was too highly concentrated among a few sectors,” he said, recalling a conundrum in the previous administration, which oversaw an annual economic expansion of over six percent but without any improvement in the poverty rate.

“I felt there was a very slow structural transformation of the economy, and part of that is the way the economic structure is influenced by the economic policies and economic regulations and also business practices,” he said. “So, in other words, it is about the lack of competition,” he added. LUIS LEONCIO