CCPC handles US$6m worth of mergers

THE Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) says it handled merger investments valued at US$6 million in 2017.

CCPC, executive director, Chilufya Sampa said the investments have since created 4,430 direct jobs and 411 more jobs were maintained due to the mergers.

Mr. Sampa was speaking during the 2017 end of year media briefing held in Lusaka yesterday.

“In the year under review the directorate of mergers and monopolies received 82 merger notifications against the set target for the year of 40.”

“This represents a 60 percent increase in merger notifications compared to the previous year 2016,” he said. He said out of the 82 notifications received 65 merger reviews were closed representing a 33 percent increase on 2016 merger cases closed adding that this indicated a 79 percent efficiency rate on the closed cases.

Mr. Sampa explained that of the 65 closed cases the ser- vices sector received the highest number of merger reviews with 13 recorded in 2017 while banking and finance recorded 11 and the real estate sector also had 11.

He said others are the agriculture sector which has nine, manufacturing with eight and the tourism and mining sector had four each. He said the commission fined 8 enterprises for implementing mergers without authorisation with the remaining seven cases still under assessment.

He stated that the commission will in 2018 continue contributing to Zambia’s foreign direct investment and ease of doing business by the facilitation of merger transactions.

Mr. Sampa noted that the manufacturing sector had continued to dominate in abuse of cases contributing over 50 percent of the cases reviewed in 2017. He stated that there was an increase in the number of restrictive business practices cases handled in 2017 adding that the commission attended to 37 cases and that 18 of them had since been closed.