CA approves mergers worth P790m
Pauline Dikuelo | Thursday March 3, 2016 18:00
The mergers have led to transfer of skills in production of wheat products, diamond mining and canvas and tent manufacturing. Addressing Parliament recently, the Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry, Sadique Kebonang said this has also resulted in an increase in citizen empowerment as two citizen-owned companies acquired internationally-owned companies.
“During the year, the Authority also began to conduct post-merger impact assessments on selected mergers which were approved more than three years ago to document the benefits that the mergers have had in the economy and effect necessary interventions where conditions or undertakings given have not been complied with,” Kebonang said.
He added that the Authority is investigating 11 cases and two of them, which relate to bid rigging are at the High Court after they appealed a decision made by the adjudicating organ, the Competition Commission. “As opposed to the last financial year, where the Authority’s intervention lifted barriers to entry across various sectors which led to five new market entrants, there has been two cases of abuse of market power in the supplier market to the retail sector where barriers to entry have been removed,” he said. Kebonang said the Authority has been engaged in efforts to enhance fair market entry, competitive pricing, growth and participation within the domestic market in the country.
On another note, the assistant minister said since the inception of the Economic Diversification Drive (EDD) five years ago, cumulative total purchases amounting to P18.8 billion worth of goods and services have been recorded.
Out of the figure, the value of purchases from local manufacturers and service providers stood at P9.8 billion. As at January 2016, a cumulative value of P2.091 billion worth of purchases was recorded since the beginning of the 2015/2016 financial year.
A total of 1,511 enterprises have been issued with EDD certificates out of which 480 are manufactures, 996 were service providers and 35 of them are in agricultural production. From the 1,511 certified enterprises, 1,260 are classified under the small-scale category, 162 are under medium scale while 89 are classified under large-scale category. These 1,511 enterprises together employ a total of 41,672 people.