a tripartite report - Unctad

ZIMBABWE
Section 5 (1) (f) that provide as “to provide information
to interested persons on current policy
with regard to restrictive practices, acquisitions
and monopoly situations, to serve as guidelines
5.1 Competition Advocacy and
Public Education
The CTC has done a few activities in this area. In
2008, the CTC had been writing articles on competition
law and publishing them in the local newspaper
once a month, but the activity stopped in
2010 for unexplainable reasons. During the same
time, interviews where held at least twice in year
on local Television channel and on the local radio
station. The Director and the Assistant Director
(competition) appeared on these media coverage.
The other advocacy work done, was in conjunction
with workshops on utility provision and public
hearing workshops for cases before the CTC.
Interview with the Zimbabwe Law Association
(ZLA) showed that there was very little interaction
between the two institutions; as such there have
not been any established relationship. With regard
to competition law practice, it was reported that
but business law practitioners were seen to be
possible candidates for such specialization due to
resemblance of the issues. It was further found out
that, ZLA had not placed competition as a priority
in its agenda, partly because there was no demand
for such services from the market and also
because the CTC had not been active in using the
ZLA as a forum for promoting competition law
practice.
The ZLA considered the CTC to be doing a commendable
job given the economic challenges that
Zimbabwe went through. It was reported that in
the area of merger control, a lot of work has been
done but there was either no non merger cases
dealt with or not publicized. Regarding public protection
of government monopolies, the CTC was
thought of having limited enforcement powers
being nick named “toothless bulldog”.
The same sentiment was shared with Confederation
of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) which is an
organization with a membership base of 1,350
business mostly manufacturers and service pro-
203
viders and the Zimbabwe National Chamber of
Commerce (ZNCC) an organization with 800 active
members and 3,000 on their data base. The
other ZNCC fora include Annual general meetings
where 200 members are usually in attendance and
the Newsletter distributed to 3,000 different entities
in Zimbabwe and beyond.
no established relationship between the CZI and
the CTC and that it was their feeling that CTC has
greater role to play and they have not met their
obligation especially on protection of local industries.
It was learnt during this interview that, there were
policy issues emanating from the CTC’s duo (competition
and tariff) mandate. CZI blamed the CTC
for not doing enough to protect the local industry
from foreign competition; even in highly concentrated
industries such as the brewery. Without be-
local manufactured beers, they put pressure from
arbitral price rise; the CTC is on one hand supposed
to promote this through competition and on the
other side supposed to restrict the same beer import
through tariff in support of local beer manufac-
ing
policy objective resulting from the co-existence
of competition and tariff at the CTC.
The academia has also been reached out sparingly;
the CTC has once invited the University of
Zimbabwe (Economics Department) to present a
paper in a workshop on competition law. With the
petition
at both undergraduates and postgraduate
levels.
There are 49 under-graduate students out of which
26 take elective business related courses such as
Business Law, Commercial Law Company Law and
Corporate Law. In terms of research, there have
not been substantive dissertations in the area of
competition other than three 4th year law students
who have done research work on competition law
It was also learnt that the university had no formal
relationship with the CTC but it was opportune
time to establish a competition law subject in the
laws degree programme; and that the University is
willing and eager to forge relationship with CTC in
pursuit of this endeavor.
ZIMBABWE