Fair Trade Commission Plans to Amend the Law to Loosen Restrictions on Enterprises’ Concerted Action.

The Chairman of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), Hwang, Tzong-Leh (黃宗樂) held a press conference on April 29, declaring the policy for the coming 3 years. Hwang stated that joint venture and strategic alliance adopted by enterprises have become more common among industries seeking niche. To assure steady development of the industry and to assist small and medium enterprises’ competitiveness, FTC plans to loosen restrictions on enterprises’ concerted action. In the preliminary planning, the exceptional approval clause of concerted action will be added to the Fair Trade Law based on foreign statutory examples. If enterprises plan to adopt concerted action to spare production costs, FTC will loosen restrictions on concerted action appropriately in case the relevant parties’ market share is lower than 5%.

 

Such exceptional approval clause of concerted action also includes concerted R&D. Hwang indicated that FTC plans to add Item 8, Article 14 to the Fair Trade Law, which stipulates that the science & technology industry can conduct basis technical R&D in concerted fashion. As such, the science & technology industry can coordinate the upstream and downstream industries’ resources to jointly research, develop, and share their fulfillment.

 

For the sake of effectively raiding the concerted action that impedes market competition, FTC will introduce the leniency policy from abroad, introducing a “whistle blowing clause”, and endowing the parties involved in illegal practice with exemption to encourage report of illegality and assist in investigation. (2003.04)

CYJ/CCS