Gambia to have competition law

 

By Momodou Trawally

 

A COMMONWEALTH Secretariat official and two consultants are in Banjul to help the government finalise draft legislation on changing competition policy into law for The Gambia. Such a law will protect the process of competition for the benefit of consumers, and everybody in The Gambia, they told this reporter in an exclusive interview.

Makbul Rahim chief programme officer (legal) at the special advisory services division and two consultants from UK, Arthur Pryor and Martin Howe are working with the Department of Trade, Industry and Employment of the Gambia government, which has been working to ensure fair trade and trade practices in the country.

Competition policies, said Suwareh Jabai principal principal economist at the Trade ministry in Banjul, is one of the tools used in most countries to ensure there are free and fair trade practices.

His department of state started collaborating with the Commonwealth Secretariat on the preparation of the policy a year ago, and in May last year organised a national workshop to validate their first draft.

According to Jabai, the first draft was validated and the comments from stakeholders were forwarded to the Commonwealth secretariat, which sent a report which was also looked at.

Discussions with this mission this week have focused on coming up with a final draft, which will be submitted to government in July, he revealed.

In an interview, Rahim the team leader, said their mission here is to assist The Gambia government to develop a competition policy into law for the country.

The Commonwealth Secretariat has engaged the services of two consultants - Dr Martin Howe who had been in the trade field in UK and had some experience in competition law matters and investigations, and Arthur Pryor who also worked in the trade industry and was lately a competition commissioner in UK.

Pryor told this paper that this is the first visit to The Gambia by such a team from the Commonwealth Secretariat. Pryor noted they are on the final stage of consulting with senior officials to finalise work done over the past two years at the Department of State for Trade, which will be drafting a competition law bill.

Competition law, he went on, is a complex area which is growing around the world, and many African countries have now developed it, the essence being to liberalise economies and trade.

Competition, he noted, is there to underpin the process of liberalisation and to make sure that where monopolies and other things are dismantled, they are not replaced by private sector barriers which will simply re-introduce some of the restrictions in place before.

The Commonwealth secretariat mission will leave Banjul for the United Kingdom on Saturday.