Designing a cooperation framework for Philippine competition and regulatory agencies

As the Philippines move toward the legislation of its comprehensive competition law, one important issue that has emerged is the interaction between the competition agency and sector regulators. Based on a review of different approaches that different countries have adopted, the paper develops a framework for the interplay between regulatory agencies and competition authority in the Philippines. Taking into account the country's stages of institutional development and market and policy reforms, the paper proposes an approach that would leave competition enforcement exclusively in the hands of the competition authority while technical and economic regulation would be performed by the sector regulator. At the same time, the sector regulator may be given competition law enforcement functions to be performed in coordination with the competition authority. The proposed approach would be based on a cooperation mechanism with sector regulators taking the leading role in economic and technical issues while the competition authority will be the lead in competition issues like abuse of dominance, anticompetitive agreements, cartels and merger review. It is important that the two coordinate and consult with each other to ensure that the policies or remedial measures taken by one would not be against the mandate of the other. The competition functions of the authority such as assuring non-discriminatory access to essential networks and controlling other forms of anticompetitive conduct and merger review may be shared with sector regulators.