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For immediate release
In response to the government consultation paper ¡§Detailed Proposals for a Competition Law¡¨, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce has submitted a paper to the government detailing its comments on the government proposals.
HKGCC Chairman Andrew Brandler said, ¡§The Chamber¡¦s position remains that we are prepared to consider supporting a competition law if it is well designed in accordance with a minimalist approach, and if there are enough safeguards to address business concerns and to ensure that it will be pro-market and business-friendly.¡¨
In the submission paper, the Chamber stated that the object of the law should be to regulate anti-competitive behaviour. ¡§The types of conduct to be regulated should be specified explicitly in the law and should be limited to seven types of anti-competitive conducts, including price-fixing, bid-rigging, market allocation, sales and production quotas, joint boycotts, unfair or discriminatory standards, and abuse of dominant position,¡¨ said Dr WK Chan, Senior Director for Business Policy at the Chamber.
In considering whether action should be taken by the regulator, the Chamber suggested that the ¡§market¡¨ must be defined clearly and properly, to enable market participants to assess the effects of their conduct, especially when most Hong Kong-based companies are competing in a market that goes beyond the geographical boundary of Hong Kong and links the Mainland to the world. This is a crucial issue which is not adequately addressed in the consultation paper.
Chamber CEO Alex Fong said, ¡§On implementation strategy, we recommend an incremental, phased approach.¡¨ According to this incremental approach, the implementation can be carried out in three phases. These includes Phase I - deals with price-fixing and bid-rigging; Phase II - deals with other anti-competitive agreements, including market allocation, sales and production quotas, joint boycotts, and unfair or discriminatory standards; Phase III - tackles abuse of dominant position.
More details of the Chamber¡¦s submission can be found at HKGCC website:
http://www.chamber.org.hk/memberarea/chamber_view/policy_statement_template.asp?id=3215
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