Rapporteur’s Presentation
Technical Session Three: “Convincing Policymakers
and Garnering Greater Support for Competition
Reforms”
Rapporteur
David Ong’olo
Board Member, CUTS NRC
Kenya
Jaipur, Thursday, 14th March, 2013
Issues to be Presented
1. How does one communicate with policymakers?
2. What evidence is required, especially in developing
countries – where are the gaps?
3. What could be possible limitations?
1. Communicating with Policy Makers -1
Dr. Aldaba and Mr. Sampa gave some good suggestions:
1. Evidence-based research is crucial
2. Use of Policy Notes
- non-technical simplified version of discussion papers
3. It has to be constant communication & dialogue:
(a) briefings
(b) regular discussion for a - seminars, brown bag lunches,
press briefings.
3. Give policy makers a role in the discussions to provide
reactions
4. Get out of the capital – have Regional seminars
1. Communicating with Policy Makers - 2
1. Meet Parliamentary Committee members.
2. Regular weekly issues presentation to the Vice President
3. Important:
Show relevance of competition in every day economic
activity!!
2. Required Evidence - especially in Developing
Countries
Give solid evidence on the role of competition in different
aspects of the economy
1. For example show the restrictiveness of regulations:
– World Bank case of Honduras benchmarking product market regulation
against OECD
• Barriers to trade
• Barriers to entrepreneurship
• Effects of state control
2. Show how competition can reduce poverty
3. Show how competition can increase jobs
4. Mexican evidence on how people suffer disproportionately from
monopolistic behaviour of producers
* By region
* By income level
But gaps will exist in DCs for various data and there are methodological
issues as explained in the first rapporteur’s report.
3. Some Limitations – When the political and
economic perspectives are not Aligned
Reasons for which politicians may not support an effective
competition regime - 1
Prof. Jenny gives a succinct summary:
1) They may be mostly interested in macro-policies - employment, productivity,
growth, innovation etc.
2) They may have higher discount rates than economists and favor policies having
short term, domestic and regional benefits. – No interest in long term benefits.
3) They may only care about the welfare of their constituency rather than the overall
welfare.
4) They may not trust economic analysis presented
5) They may weigh differently the consumer surplus and producer surplus.
6) They may not understand economics and the reasoning.
7) They may not trust economic analysis presented.
Mr. Sampa also gave some examples
1) Command economy mindset of sole policy makers
Not Conclusion - Some Issues for reflection
1. Well intentioned interventions may actually benefit the rich
and middle class instead of the poor.
2. The poor themselves may need to be convinced through
practical results that the competition regime intervention
is in their interest.
3. While it always easier to establish consumer surplus, it may
be helpful to estimate producer surplus as a way to gain
support for the business class.
4. It is important that advocacy to convince policy makers
becomes a joint effort between CAs, Research institutions
and advocacy groups
Thank you for your kind attention.