Combating Cartels in India

Abstract

While the Competition Law is still evolving in India, we often come across Cartelisation across all market sectors - oil, gas, potash, cement and so on. Cartelisation refers to the process of forming Cartels which is a group of independent companies engaged in similar business that join together to fix prices, limit production or share consumers. The Competition Act, 2002, a part of which came into effect in 2009 prohibits “Cartels”. However, this prohibition is not sufficed to put deal with the problems that such cartels pose for the economy and ultimately, the consumers. The paper studies the reasons why the present competition law in India is not adequately competent in dealing with prohibition of cartels and penalising the corporations involved in such unfair trade practices. It further discusses plausible amendments that can be made to the current legislation so as to ensure effective application of the same by way of comparing the competition laws across different nations.

Keywords: Competition Law, Cartelisation, Collusion, Price Fixing, Leniency Policy