If you remember correctly a few months ago Tiger Brands was caught fixing bread prices in a massive controversy. A few weeks ago the Competitions Commission ruled over this disgusting behaviour and found that the prices for bread has been colluded to and imposed a 99 Million rand fine.
Now I don’t have a problem with the Commission going after bread manufacturers but I do have a problem with who they do not prosecute.
The Commission fined the car industry a while back finding that their prices were excessively high and what did they do on the issue? Well cars are still excessively priced and nothing has been done. I guess the two times I’ve ever heard of the commission is the car incident and the recent bread price fixing scandal.
This week they’ve decided to go after milk producers for potential collusion. Not only do they collude but also sell excess milk produced to each other instead of to the consumer at cheaper prices. While it does make sense for the Commission to go after the milk, bread and other staple food producers there are some issues with their sudden voracious attacks on primary goods producers.
So here’s my issue: why the hell do we hear about the Competition Commission occasionally when there are so many companies that need to be regulated. Firstly there are the government entities such as Telkom and Eskom. These are two of the most incompetent and disgusting companies that do next to nothing and make the government lots and lots of money. Why does the competition’s commission not do anything about it?
The Competition Commission is obviously a government entity and the ANC government feels to need only to care about the lowest common denominator in this country: the extremely poor. There must be a certain irony that the year before elections the Commission jumps into action, years after it was last in the news for doing anything useful, to defend the interests of the poor. There are so many industries that require collusion related regulation and frankly it annoys me that areas such as banking and the motor industry are left to gouge the consumer dry through collusion and price fixing. The government however has no need to sort out the car industry as they gain massive income from the taxation of cars.
So you see, the problem here is that like most government entities, the Competition’s Commission is towing a governmental line and much like government being vastly incompetent and ineffective. They sued Tiger Brands 99 million rand for the bread price fixing scandal and I shudder to think where the money could have gone: there are so many expense accounts for parliamentary ministers that 99 million rand can simply be absorbed into.
No poor person affected by the price fixing will ever see a cent of that money and that’s typically sad in my opinion.
Enjoy this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.
