CCI must regulate all sectors: Chawla

Anti-trust body wants to retain power to regulate banking,insurance,telecom and power.

Anti-trust body CCI wants to retain the powers to regulate competition issues in all the sectors including banking,insurance,telecom and power,saying there is no conflict of jurisdiction.

“Whenever there is a new regulator people want to be outside the purview of that regulator. The argument given is that some sectors already have sectoral regulators,but the conceptual framework is very clear that those regulators have certain specific functions relating to that areas but not market functions,” CCI Chairman Ashok Chawla said.

“Essentially and conceptually the two regulators have to work in coordination and according to us there

is no issue of conflict of jurisdiction and certainly no case for keeping some outside the ambit of the Competition Commission,” he said.

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Chawla added that when the government brought out the competition law and prescribed a market regulator “then everybody should be subject to that unless there are extremely serious public policy considerations which needs certain activities to be out”.

CCI is empowered by sections 3 and 4 of the Competition Act,to check anti-competition practices and abuse of dominant position. It also has the powers to scan and approve high-voltage mergers and acquisitions that could have bearing on competition in the market.

The government has also initiated amendments in the competition law,seeking revision in threshold limits for companies to seek CCI’s go ahead,among other things. The Competition (Amendment) Bill was referred to the group of ministers as a consensus could not be reached on the Commission’s jurisdiction.

Several ministries,like finance and telecom,have been asking blanket exemption from the CCI’s purview for its respective sectors.

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Chawla said that even though banking mergers and acquisitions would be kept outside the purview of the CCI once the Banking (Laws) Amendment Bill is passed,the issues relating to market practices would still be checked by it.

“Bank mergers proposals have been coming to us for approval till now,like HSBC-RBS merger,but after the Banking (Laws) Amendment Bill is passed,they would not need to come to us. However,they are not exempt from the competition law completely. For example,if banks are found doing something in tandem,we could still regulate them,” Chawla said.

CCI became fully functional in May 2009 has so far passed some very important cases,imposing substantial penalty on companies like NSE,DLF and most recently Rs 6,307 crore fine on 11 cement companies.