Jordan Times
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Competition law vital to
promote economic efficiency — conference
By Melanie Jacobson
AMMAN — Local and international experts taking part in the First National
Competition Conference on Tuesday highlighted the technicalities of the National
Competition Law and the rationale behind it.
Effective since August 2002 as a provisional law before its enactment by
Parliament and endorsement in 2004, the law has made Jordan the first Arab
country in the Middle East with antitrust and competition legislation in place.
The law “provides strong incentives for promoting private entrepreneurship and
attracting foreign direct investment,” and is “vital for improving economic
efficiency, developing competitiveness, enhancing consumer welfare and therefore
achieving sustained growth,” according to a statement from the Competition
Directorate at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the administrative party
authorised to implement the Competition Law.
Speakers at the two-day conference, which concluded yesterday, explained how the
law protects small- and medium-sized enterprises from unfair competition by
dismantling cartels and monopolies.
The law also prevents price-fixing and encourages competitive innovation to
ensure consumers access to a “quality product at a reasonable price,” Nesreen
Barakat, policy support implementation manager at EJADA, the sponsor of the
conference, told The Jordan Times.
“It is a must to set prices by the forces of supply and demand,” Luna Abbadi,
director of the Competition Directorate, told the conference, which included
public and private parties interested in the implementation of the law.
The idea is to “strike a balance between the welfare of the producers and the
consumers,” Ibrahim Saif, a researcher at the University of Jordan's Centre for
Strategic Studies and a speaker at the conference told The Jordan Times.
In his address at the opening ceremony, EJADA Director Bill Winning used the
case of lamb prices during Eid Al Adha to illustrate the effect of the National
Competition Law. Jordanian lamb providers had year after year colluded to raise
prices during the Eid, when demand for lamb would be at its highest, Winning
said. With the law in place, imports were allowed to enter the local market and
for the first time ever, lamb prices actually dropped for the Eid sales.
International competition discourages collusion and price-fixing, Winning said.
Conference attendees pointed out that global competition can be difficult for
local companies to match. But “if that helps keep prices down for the consumer,
so be it,” Winning told The Jordan Times. “It's called world trade.”