Ethiopia and EPA Negotiation 2008 - FES Ethiopia

addressed since most of the CARIFORUM countries do not have merger control
rules and so far mergers have not been prominent in the economies of this
region. 57 The CARIFORUM has stated that any EPA commitments on competition
policy on the part of CARIFORUM must be predicated on first strengthening
institutional capacities of the relevant regional body and for the development
and implementation of regional policies and strategies on competition.
The Ethiopian Competition Policy regime is at a nascent stage. The government
of Ethiopia issued a competition related legislation called the Trade Practices
Proclamation No.329/2003 only in 2003.This legislation states that the
Government is committed to “[establishing] a system that is conducive for the
promotion of a competitive environment, by regulating anticompetitive
practices in order to maximize economic efficiency and social welfare.” It
prohibits anticompetitive behavior and unfair or deceptive conduct by one
competitor against another; authorizes regulation of prices for basic goods and
services in times of shortage; and requires disclosure on labels of basic consumer
information such as weights and measures. The law also provides for the
creation of two implementing institutions, the Trade Practices Commission and
the Trade Practices Secretariat.
Aspects of the law and institutions, however, make it difficult to use them as
effective tools for
enhancing consumer welfare. 58 First, the law has disparate goals—prohibiting
anticompetitive
conduct, regulating unfair and deceptive conduct between individual
competitors, prohibiting
importation of goods at prices that are below wholesale in the country of
production, regulating prices for basic goods and services, and regulating
product labeling—that divert enforcement from the most harmful
anticompetitive conduct and dilute limited enforcement resources. Second, the
Commission has no staff of its own and virtually no budget. The Trade Practices
Secretariat does have a small staff of approximately five, but it has a clerical,
non-investigative, and non-prosecutorial function. Third, legal and economic
training in competition policy and law enforcement at the university level does
not exist.
Given this, Ethiopia’s negotiation strategy should focus on flexible provisions and
should focus more on cooperation modalities than on substantive rules.
Ethiopia should also argue that commitments on competition policy must be
57
DG Trade, CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement: An Overview, April 2008
58
See Booz Allen Hamilton, Ethiopia Commercial Law & Institutional Reform and Trade
Diagnostic, January 2007, p. 57 for more discussion on Ethiopian Competition law regime.
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