CCS shares views on ASEAN at GCR Live 6th Annual Asia-Pacific Law Leaders Forum 2017

Mr Toh Han Li, Chief Executive of CCS, participated as a panellist in the ASEAN Regulators’ Roundtable^[1] on 2 March at the Global Competition Review (GCR) Live Singapore: 6th Annual Asia-Pacific Law Leaders Forum.

Mr Toh highlighted that e-commerce is an area that offers immense growth opportunities and can further facilitate economic integration in the ASEAN region. E-commerce is also a relatively new area and one that is likely to generate new challenges for competition law enforcement over the next few years. 

Given the relative lack of Competition Policy and Law (CPL) knowledge and expertise in this area, CCS has initiated the ASEAN CPL Programme to plug this gap, particularly in the ASEAN context. Specifically, CCS will lead the development of a regional handbook on e-commerce to guide ASEAN Member States (AMSs) on identifying and addressing potential challenges on competition law enforcement relating to e-commerce.

On greater cross-agency cooperation amongst the ASEAN regulators, Mr Toh acknowledged a major challenge arising from different competition law frameworks. For example, some jurisdictions do not have leniency programmes and in such a scenario, even if CCS had information about conduct that may affect another jurisdiction, we will not be able to contact the jurisdiction to discuss enforcement cooperation.  In a similar manner, CCS would not be able to coordinate and/or discuss potentially problematic merger situations with jurisdictions that do not have merger regulation in place. Despite these challenges, Mr Toh agreed that there is room for informal cooperation among agencies on cases of mutual interests.

For 2017, CCS will focus on the digital and data economy (e.g. e-commerce, big data), competition issues in private sector procurement and assessing non-price sources of market power among various priorities.

[1] Moderated by Mr Lim Chong Kin from Drew & Napier Singapore, the panel discussed capacity building, the development of competition laws in the ASEAN region, the differing treatment of key commercial conduct, and key policy drivers in each jurisdiction, enforcement of competition laws, focus markets as well as recent cases. The panel consist of 5 other ASEAN regulators, namely Mr Arsenio Balisacan, Chairman of the Philippine Competition Commission, Mr Ragunath Kesavan, Member of the Commission of the Malaysia Competition Commission, Ms Trinh Anh Tuan, Deputy Director-General in the Domestic Trade Department of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Laos, Mr Kamser Lumbanradja, Commissioner of Indonesia’s Commission for the Supervision of Business Competition and Ms Heidi Farah Sia Binti Abd Rahman, Acting Assistant Director of the Department of Economic Planning and Development, Prime Minister’s Office of Brunei.