FM at 13th Annual Day Commemoration of CCI

At the 13th Annual Day commemoration of the Competition Commission of India (CCI), FM Nirmala Sitharaman outlined the challenges of competition in Indian and global contexts. In her address, she appreciated the CCI for taking timely initiatives during the peak of the pandemic to ensure continuity of regulatory work. “To speed up recovery, companies need to scale up. Scaling up is already happening, and CCI should have a proactive understanding of what is shaping markets in this process, especially in M&As,” she opined. Citing the threat of cartelisation hovering over the infrastructure growth planned for the country, she underlined the threat of rising input costs. Referring to the adverse impact on supply chains, she called upon CII to understand the technical nuances of digitalisation and understand whether they were being used fairly, effectively and transparently. Ashok Kumar Gupta, Chairperson, CCI highlighted that CCI has been constantly upgrading its investigation toolkits and techniques to unravel anti-competitive conduct, which is often shrouded in secrecy.