The Competition Act aims to promote healthy competition in India. The main intention of the act is to avoid monopoly. Take Facebook for instance. Some economists are of the opinion that Facebook exhibits a monopoly. Meaning, it wants to rule the world of digital messaging. To achieve this, Facebook bought almost every competitor that entered its way. FB achieved this through mergers or acquisitions. FB acquired Instagram and Whatsapp, major competitors. The competition act prevents such mergers and acquisitions. The act was legislated in 2002. In 2022, the Government of India proposed certain changes and additions to the act. The amendment is still pending and the GoI recently added some more changes along with those it intended to introduce in 2022.
What additions were made in 2023?
- Bill to be discussed during Budget Session of 2023
- Regulatory frameworks to be fine-tuned. To be brought in line with the digital world and the changes that occurred in the past two decades
- The scope of the settlement and commitment scheme is to be expanded
What changes were introduced in 2022?
- Deals with values more than Rs 2000 crores should be notified to CCI
- Merger approval should be done within 150 working days. This was 210 working days before
- CCI should have at least one judicial officer as its member