EDITORIAL: The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) in a press release uploaded an extremely favourable International Monetary Fund (IMF) assessment of its activities in the 186-page 20 November 2025 report titled “Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Report on Pakistan”, highlighting the significant steps taken by CCP to identify market bottlenecks, entry barriers, and gaps in the legal and regulatory frameworks.
While the need to issue the press statement was undoubtedly because it was ignored by the media, coupled with a desire to toot its own horn, which is rare for a regulatory body, yet the general long-term perception in this country has been the inability of the CCP to enforce its decisions — an inability that was cited by the Fund and is reproduced in the press release as follows: “timely and credible institutional response to anti-competitive behaviour is essential for restoring market integrity and public trust.”
The CCP press release noted that its spokesperson clarified that the backlog of court cases has been reduced by nearly 70 percent, securing decisions in 428 out of 567 cases; and cited the IMF as maintaining in the report that the newly established Market Intelligence Unit is an important development for proactive detection of collusion and market manipulation but detracts from its effectivity by noting the following clause: “provided that it is backed-up by effective enforcement action.”
The Fund report is more detailed and notes that “to ensure meaningful deterrence, instances of collusive or illegal conduct must trigger consistent legal and institutional responses. Demonstrating that both public and private actors are held accountable reinforces the credibility of the competition regime and signals a serious commitment to fair market practices.”
Not cited in the press release but noted in the report is the following: “equally important is strengthening the downstream impact of CCP’s findings — particularly those related to sectoral barriers and collusion — by enhancing coordination with key accountability institutions such as the Auditor General and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB)……to enhance regulatory accountability and deter market abuse by clearing the CCP’s backlog of cases and establishing robust investigative linkages between CCP, NAB (National Accountability Bureau), and FIA (Federal Investigation Agency) for prosecuting violations.”
There was also no mention of the Fund team urging the government to “safeguard regulatory independence and credibility by ensuring that appointments to executive and senior management positions within the CCP (and SECP) are governed by transparent, rigorous, and merit-based mechanisms, to minimise political or discretionary influence and align with international standards for regulatory governance.”
The press release cites the spokesperson as maintaining that the CCP has undergone a major turnaround in the last two years with litigation barriers removed leading to recovery of 1.01 billion rupees in penalties, compared to only 200 million rupees in the previous 15 years. However, more than 9 billion rupees in penalties has been imposed on cartel behaviour, though the spokesperson does not indicate that this amount has been recovered.
The spokesperson further contends that “the CCP has strengthened action against deceptive marketing, penalising major firms in the real estate, automobile, dairy, and education sectors”, ending on an upbeat note, “these steps reflect a shift from a traditional regulator to a data driven market watchdog focused on fair competition.”
The IMF report urges the government to strengthen the CCP independence by enhancing the selection (shortlisting) process for the executive and senior management to ensure a rigorous, transparent, and merit-based process — a recommendation that one would hope will be implemented in all selections/appointments, especially for regulatory bodies, though to date past practice of using influence to get an appointment appears to remain in place.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025