According to the Secretary of State for the Budget and Public Investment, Juciene de Sousa, the assessment of the competitive profile of the aforementioned "relevant sectors of the country's economy, is one of the attributions of the Competition Regulatory Authority (ARC) of Angola.
One of the tasks of ARC consists of "assessing the impact of public policies and aid on competition, that is, ensuring, with the Government and other public entities, that the policies formulated by them are in line with the best competition practices", she stressed.
"In this domain, we highlight the launch of the Program for the Evaluation of the Competitive Profile of Public Policies (PAPP), which is being implemented, with the port, land transport, civil construction and banking sectors being analysed, in a first phase", said the governor.
Juciane de Sousa, who was speaking at the opening of the III Annual Conference on Competition and Economic Regulation in Angola, considered competition to be "a public good", foreseen in the country's Constitution, "which is important to promote and safeguard".
She stressed, in her speech, that the economic regulation exercised by the State "is intended to overcome market failures" and to promote behaviors or results that serve the public interest, ensuring that companies compete on an equal footing.
For the official, the technological, economic and geopolitical dynamics pose many challenges to competition policy, such as changing the concept of the market and the perception of economic activities, the emergence of disruptive markets and others.
"That is why one of the great challenges for economic regulation is to guarantee the maintenance of competitiveness, while encouraging innovation", she stressed.
The III Annual Conference on Competition and Economic Regulation in Angola takes place under the motto "The Defense of Competition as a Factor of Economic Growth" and is part of the celebrations of the fourth anniversary of the ARC, created in December 2018.
Regarding the activities of the ARC, over the last four years, the Secretary of State referred that the entity "has been prepared to face obstacles, with rigor and tenacity, through appropriate legislative and institutional tools".
She also highlighted ARC's participation in the technical group of the National Commission for the Implementation of the Privatization Program (ProPriv), noting that the achievement of ProPriv's objectives involves strengthening competition regulation and the role of competition law.
ProPriv is a Government Programme, approved in 2018, which includes the privatization of various State assets and/or companies, namely in the sectors of banking, agriculture, industry, telecommunications, insurance and others.
The participation of the competition authority aims to "ensure that the barriers removed by the Government, by reducing the State's direct participation in the market, are not reintroduced by agents with high economic power".
For this reason, she added, ARC's participation in ProPriv contributes to safeguarding compliance with the rules of competition law, ensuring the competitiveness of tender procedures and "fostering a competitive culture" between producers and consumers.
