ISLAMABAD: A Competition Commission of Pakistan’s enquiry concerning deceptive marketing practices employed by a beverage company has been on a halt for the last five years due to a court’s stay orders.
The company, Mezan Beverages (Private) Limited has been allegedly using legal techniques to pursue its case in courts against the CCP. Since the initiation of enquiry in August 2018 against Mezan’s alleged involvement in deceptive marketing practices, the company has obtained injunctions on two different occasions.
On 12 October 2018, Mezan filed a writ petition and obtained a stay order against the initiation of the enquiry. The stay order lasted for two years. The LHC vacated the stay on 26 October 2018.
On 28 June 2021, the CCP completed its enquiry and issued a show cause notice to Mezan on 7 July 2021.
On 3 August 2021, Mezan obtained another stay order from LHC against the CCP’s show cause notice. The stay order is ongoing from August 2021 up until today.
The enquiry was started when CCP received a formal complaint from Pepsi Co Inc against Mezan Beverages (Private) Limited. The complaint stated that Mezan was copying the overall packaging of Pepsi’s energy drink “Sting” for Mezan’s energy drink “Storm.”
It is pertinent to mention here that the Supreme Court discourages interference in the statutory jurisdiction of public sector entities. According to the Supreme Court, the law provides adequate remedies, and constitutional jurisdiction should only be exercised in exceptional circumstances.
In September this year, the Supreme Court of Pakistan, unanimously, upheld the statutory powers of the CCP relating to initiation of enquiries and gathering of information.
In 2020, the CCP initiated an enquiry had sought information from cooking oil and ghee companies for information about ghee and cooking oil prices. Dalda Foods challenged the enquiry in the Islamabad High Court (IHC).
The IHC had set aside CCP’s call for information letters and the initiation of enquiry. The high court had imposed extraordinary requirements on the exercise of CCP’s regulatory and enquiry powers.
The CCP had challenged the decision of the High Court before the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
While allowing the CCP’s appeal the Supreme Court set aside these requirements, which included the requirement to provide detailed reasoning to an undertaking when initiating an enquiry and to pass a reasoned order in this regard.
Hence, the stance and actions of the CCP were upheld in the historic and landmark judgement of the Supreme Court.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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