Competition Act will not allow blanket exemption: sources

The government is now getting ready to amend the Competition Act of 2002. Government sources told CNBC-TV18 that it will set up a group of ministers (GoM) to chalk out the amendments.

This GoM may include representatives from different ministries like telecom, finance, law etc.

However, not everybody is enthused about being under the ambit of the competition commission. Some sectors like banking, telecom, insurance want blanket exemption from the Act as they already have respective regulators.

In fact, this has been a matter of debate for sometime. For example, when RBI can look at issues of mergers why would one need another commission to do so?

Government sources said the individual regulators are good enough to manage the sectoral issues. In fact, it is being argued that the commission might not be competent to deal with specialised sectoral needs.

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But the government might not give in this time. Sources say there has been no blanket exemption proposed in the Competition Amendment Bill. The proposals are in fact prescribing different merger and acquisition threshold for different sectors.[caption id="attachment_311504" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="Regulator issues. Reuters"][/caption]

So any mergers that crosses the threshold will need nod from the commission for M&A.

The proposal also include empowering the Director General (Investigation) to search premises after taking permission from the commission as well.