MAP Executive Tea Meeting

Guest Speaker: Mr. Khalid Mirza

Chairman, Competition Commission of Pakistan
Venue & Date: PC Ballroom 2 October 19, 2009

A two-hour Executive Tea meeting was organized under the auspices of the Marketing Association of Pakistan (MAP), which was attended by the Marketing Faculty of IBA. The guest speaker for the evening was Mr. Khalid Mirza, Chairman, Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP). The highlight of his lecture was ‘Anticompetitive Behaviour’. In his ninety minutes lecture, he sketched a very vivid picture of functions of Competition Commission of Pakistan and its role. Mr. Mirza highlighted that CCP is involved in protecting consumers, where in the modern competition the main beneficiary is Business Entity, who are not only the seller/suppliers but also the consumers, who sets demand and supply equation. He vehemently declared that the motto of CCP is to ‘keep business secrets as our secrets’. With reference to the ‘Competitive Law 2007’, he pinpointed that absence of effective competition is a gray lacuna and the policies that promote competition actually constitute.

According to Mr. Mirza, the pillars for CCP are: (1) To adopt and enlighten progressive approach, encouraging business growth without making Pakistan uncompetitive thus resulting in accelerated growth (2) Facilitate and assist businesses in resolving their problems in relative to competition (3) Strive to be transparent and respect business confidentiality. .

He delimited that the basics of economic management draws its root where the government relies on competition to drive economic growth and prosperity where most government are committed to harvest competition. In order to cater to this in Pakistan, he said that the government has been very keen and has set up an institution that is CCP, a quasi judicial regulatory enforcement agency, whose mandate is to provide free competition in all spheres to all entities, protect the consumers and to increase the efficiency of the economic production. There are two sides of CCP: hard and soft. Its hard side incorporates to ‘investigate and penalize anticompetitive behaviour’ such as cartelization of business entities which leads to abuse of economic power or collusive cartelization. Its soft side encompasses the three phases of penalization which is determining the problem, proving it and then penalizing the culprits.

He said that the Competition Law poses responsibility on CCP one of them is to encourage and promote some norms of competitive competition through ‘advocacy’ and ‘persuasion’ and to enforce sound competitive competition conduct. There are 110 agencies all over the world, each agency is different with its own hues, colours, approaches and faces; not ‘a’ single agency is same but they do follow certain standards and principles. Pakistan has the state of the art law which is designed to be at cutting edge that is ‘Competition Ordinance 2007’ which follows best global practices and is most responsive to the palpable behaviour of the business entities. The caveat result has been so far are discernible in business behaviour, global standard and proper implementation of competitive law. The new law demands CCP to take a reasonable approach, promoting idea of culture of competition where is law enforcement is reason based.

Mr. Khalid Mirza commented on the goodness of the ordinance and said that the ‘Competition Ordinance 2007’ is a milestone in regulatory history of Pakistan, reiterating that it is the state of the art law where the World Bank and other global agencies provide legal assistance to it; he said that ‘essentially this law is great’; what is lacking is its proper implementation, in order to cater to this the CCP has commissioner members who are capable eminent people from different walks of life.

Discussing CCP’s achievement he said that they have prepared a three-year road map, have provided a comprehensive framework gambit so effectively that within a month they operationalized its goals and regulations, revamped its staffing structure, and developed a high-tech website in order to facilitate the business community; thus, implementing a philosophy of sound regime


The most arduous and challenging task of CCP is to find proof as most of the people follow hearsay. He narrated few incidents where CCP has played a major role such as Cement Manufactures or ACMA were found guilty and slapped a fine of Rs. 6.3bn another example he gave of seven leading newspapers were forced to cancel their collusive agreement as it is against the philosophy of the ordinance. CCP can never be hurdle for business community and is focused on advocacy efforts through TV shows, chat show and conferences. The commission also has a competition consultative group comprising of 15 to 18 dignitaries from myriad Regulatory Agencies, meeting once every quarter to provide feedback of their performance and how to go about meeting their agenda for next quarter.

Section 10 of the ordinance relates to ‘Deceptive Marketing Practices’ by business undertaking which includes false information in an ad, deliberately misleading the consumer etc. CCP has a Mergers and Acquisitions office where advice is given by the lawyers to those business entities who seek it with respect to compliance of Mergers Clearance regime. It also has a ‘Conformance Reward Scheme’, giving cash rewards up to 50 lakhs payable in 4 stages to the ‘whistle blowers’ with apposite proof ensuring during the process that the confidentiality remains intact.

The essence of the CCP has been closely guarded and it is that the importance of this law lies with business enterprises and consumers at the high and low end of the supply chain NOT with the consumers at the retail level. In the end, Mr. Khalid Mirza shared few examples of local brands on their ‘Deceptive Practices in Marketing’ and CCP’s action against them such a cellular company on ‘one aana/50paisa call’; which is incorrect, then there was another campaign on the lines of ‘Duniya ki sab sai sastee call’ which was completely untrue and the last example he gave was of an International Soap leveraging on their campaign ‘Healthy Hoga Pakistan’ where two buildings inhabitants are compared one using that particular branded soap highlighting certain percentage of people falling ill and the other using some other soap or not using that soap being prone to diseases, how they arrived with the particular percentage figure is dubious and misleading. The session concluded with the vote of thanks by Mr. Rafiq Rangoonwala.

Written by and Resource person:	Nida Aslam Khan Lecturer Department of Marketing