The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) on Wednesday asserted its mandate to promote competition in Philippine industries, and recommended the lifting of some restrictions on foreign ownership enjoyed by certain industries to benefit consumers.
PCC Chairman Arsenio M. Balisacan said the commission is not disheartened by the temporary restraining order (TRO) issued by the Court of Appeals to stop it from reviewing the landmark telecommunications deal between PLDT, Globe Telecoms and San Miguel Corp.’s telecommunications companies for possible anticompetitive practices.
Balisacan said the TRO is a “temporary setback,” and that it enjoys the full backing of the Duterte administration to pursue its mandate to stimulate competition in the various industries to force companies to be more efficient and offer better services at cheaper costs.
PCC Commissioner El Cid Butuyan, who is in charge of the litigation and investigation process at the commission, disclosed that, aside from the suspended review of the telecommunications deal among the industry giants, there are also preliminary investigations being conducted in the cement industry and the power industry for anticompetitive practices.
The preliminary investigation in the power industry was brought about by a request from the Department of Energy (DOE) for the PCC’s help in determining whether there were anticompetitive practices, which happened in the power outages from July 25 to 29 this year; while the preliminary investigation for anticompetitive practices, in the cement industry was brought about by a complaint by a private individual who used to be a government official.
Butuyan said the PCC will flex its muscle to fulfill its mandate, amid speculations that the newly created commission would merely fold against the weight of monopolies, duopolies, oligarchs and other combinations of businesses in restraint of free trade.
“I think more important than having the financial muscle to fulfill our mandate, it’s good to send the message that we’re here to stay and we’re not going anytime soon. We intend to exercise our enforcement power as mandated by law; we are an enforcement agency and not a mere paper-pushing agency,” Butuyan said.
Aside from the preliminary investigations for anticompetitive practices in the cement and power industries, the PCC is also looking to dismantle some protectionist regulations issued by regulatory agencies, which have no legal or constitutional basis.
Butuyan said many restrictions imposed by regulatory agencies have no rationale aside from “protecting the incumbents.”
“What we’re looking at are some agency regulations which have no rationale but to protect the incumbents. Part of our task right now is looking for these low-hanging fruits at the agency level, which can be quickly repealed to allow more competition in certain industries,” he said.
Balisacan said there should be another major wave of deregulation in the various industries in the economy, such as what happened in the 1990s when many industries, like the airline industry, the banking sector and the telecommunications industry, were deregulated.
“We have had some follow up after that, but not on a scale that we had in the first episode in the 1990s. Of course, in the banking sector, it’s a highly competitive sector now because of the law which allowed entry of foreign banks, but we need to extend that to the other sectors of the economy,” Balisacan said.