Three Authorities Call for Sorting out Current Policies with Effects of Eliminating and Restricting Competition
Promulgation date: 2017-12-12
Recently, three authorities, including the National Development and Reform Commission ("NDRC"), have issued the Work Program for Straightening out Existing Policies with Effects of Eliminating and Restricting Competition (2017-2018) (the "Program").
The Program clearly states that it is necessary to sort out rules, normative documents, and other policies and measures currently in place to find out the provisions in respect of local protectionism, designated deals and market barriers, particularly those in six respects, such as "setting unreasonable and discriminatory conditions on the market entry and withdrawal", "forcing market players to only deal in, procure and use commodities and services supplied by designated business operators", "applying discriminatory pricing policies and subsidy policies to non-local and imported commodities and services", "posing restrictions on the entry of non-local and imported commodities and services into the local market or impeding the transportation of local commodities and the output of locally offered services to other administrative regions", "excluding non-local operators from participating or restricting their participation in local tendering and bidding activities", and "compelling operators to perform monopolistic conduct under the Anti-monopoly Law". Also, the Program sets forth four requirements on the sorting-out work, including "reinforcing the anti-monopoly law enforcement".