The National Competition Barometer (BNC) project will constitute for Morocco a benchmark and one of the essential bases of the national competition ecosystem, said Wednesday in Rabat, the President of the Competition Council, Driss Guerraoui.
Speaking at the opening of a high-level international workshop organized by the Competition Council on the “National Competition Barometer” project, Driss Guerraoui underlined that this “major structuring” project is intended to bring about an ambition which is that of contributing to the achievement of the strategic objectives that the Council has assigned to its action since its reactivation by King Mohammed VI.
As objectives, Driss Guerraoui cited, among others, the protection of the Moroccan consumer, by preserving his purchasing power and contributing to his well-being, securing the supply of the internal market with strategic goods and foodstuffs. , or the contribution to improving the business climate and strengthening the attractiveness of the national economy.
Indeed, Driss Guerraoui highlighted the need to have, particularly in the context of the health crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, an integrated national competition ecosystem, supported by an information system capable of enabling National regulatory authorities to project themselves into the future, to anticipate market dynamics and to develop legal and competitive intelligence in line with the imperatives of economic governance evolving in an uncertain world.
“The impacts of the crisis generated by the current Covid-19 pandemic are so profound that it should encourage our National Competition Authorities to engage in a collective reflection on the modes of action to be followed in the future for face the new challenges of regulating competition driven by the emergence and development of anti-competitive practices of a new kind, ”he argued.
Indeed, the BNC that the Council intends to set up, “aims to study and monitor the dynamics of competition in the various sectors of the national economy, in order to enlighten public decision-makers and market players (companies, consumers and territories) on the effectiveness of public policies, the relevance of legal mechanisms and the consistency of procedures governing competition in our country, ”noted Driss Guerraoui.
With this in mind, the BNC project will be based on macroeconomic, microeconomic and mesoeconomic indicators and measuring instruments of competition, repeated over time at regular intervals to make comparisons in terms of monitoring the condition and the evolution of competition, he said.
This repository will allow the Board to propose avenues for improvement on the basis of the identification of the factors of stagnation and the sources at the basis of the possible deterioration of the state of competition within the markets, added the Chairman of the Advice.
In doing so, this Barometer will help to propose the major changes essential to putting into perspective the areas of progress and the levers of innovation in competition law and policies, he noted.
Once set up, the BNC “will facilitate the work of our young Authority to set itself up as a legal, economic and competitive watch body capable of responding to the dynamics of our markets, to the imperatives of the competitiveness of our companies and our territories and citizens’ aspirations, mainly in strategic areas for their purchasing power and their daily well-being, ”he added.
In addition, Driss Guerraoui indicated that this important international workshop on the Moroccan competition barometer project is “a real opportunity” for our national competition authorities, the institutions and international organizations present in this workshop, to develop bilateral cooperation. and multilateral forward-looking.
“Because competition matters know no borders, it is through the exchange of experiences and the sharing of good practices in market regulation that we will be able together to face the common challenges that we will have and must meet. in the context of a world economy in deep structural crisis, ”he said.
In particular, participants in this international workshop, organized by videoconference, Cani Fernandez Vicein, President of the National Commission for Markets and Competition of the Kingdom of Spain, Tembinkosi Bonakele, President of the Competition Authority of South Africa and Ferhat Topkaya, Vice – President of the National Competition Authority of the Republic of Turkey.
The objective of the meeting is to mobilize the collective intelligence of practitioners and experts representing National Competition Authorities (Spain, South Africa and Turkey), as well as representatives of institutions and international and regional organizations that are partners of the Council, working in the field of international competitive market regulation law and policies (WB, IMF, OECD and UNCTAD).