a tripartite report - Unctad

PREFACE
agreements. . In the United Republic of Tanzania,
there is no market share threshold and parties can
voluntarily notify any agreement that they believe
deserves an exemption. The standard for an exemption
is very similar in the two jurisdictions and
the negative effects associated with the restrictions
of competition. In both jurisdictions the law
requires that in order to grant an exemption there
-
effective way to promote compliance with an antitrust
law, since the most identify serious restrictions
-
ject
to an authorization system, notify only agreements
that they believe can be exempted. Serious
just overburden competition authorities with paper
work, but do not result in an improvement of
the competitive environment.
-
ated
to a fee) and in that case the role that it plays
tions
increase too much, the Authorities may need
to issue block exemption regulations that would
of what happened in the European Union before
would make any attempt of rationalization impossible
(unless funds are guaranteed to the Authority
by some other source).
The individual country reports for the United Republic
of Tanzania and Zambia do not contain recommendations
that the substantive parts of their
laws be changed. There are however some suggestions
for revising the text of the Legislation on
some procedural issues (for example the threshold
for not restrictiveness of vertical agreements in
Zambia) but these suggestions can be implemented
through case law developments and through
informed on what is prohibited. This is the case
of vertical agreements and horizontal cooperation
agreements in the area of technology transfers
and R&D. A similar effort could be undertaken for
abuse of dominance type violations.
The regional groupings, to which the three jurisdictions
belong, could help in the issuing of these
guidelines, providing reference documents that
individual jurisdictions could then use domestically.
What is any case very important is that decisions
by the authorities be motivated and published
by making them available on the website of the
authorities. With legal provisions of a general
type decisions serve an educational purpose and
should be made available to everybody, so as to
enhance legal certainty. Also the judiciary should
have the same type of obligations and judgments
in competition cases should be made easily available,
possibly on the website of the authorities.
2. The investigative powers of
competition authorities
The major problem in antitrust cases is that the evidence
that needs to be collected to prove a violation
is not freely available in the market nor in
the information set of possible complainants. For
example in a predatory pricing case, the excluded
competitor would not have any information on the
actual level of costs of the dominant company to
be used as a benchmark to which to compare the
dominant company supposedly predatory prices.
Similarly in a cartel case, a customer of the cartel
would not have information on how the cartel operates
or, even more importantly, on whether the
cartel actually exists. As for the Authority role, simply
asking those that might have committed a violation
to provide the necessary evidence would not
provide some information can be effective only if
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will not respond or will not say the truth. This is why,
interest in providing the necessary information for
the Authority to issue a quick decision, competition
authorities need strong investigative powers in
order to be able to gather the necessary evidence.
In all three jurisdictions the Authority can open an
own motion enquiry, act on complaints, require a
person to submit information, to produce a document
or to appear in person.
9
COMPARATIVE ASSESMENT