Market Inquiries in South Africa: Meeting Big Expectations?

This chapter assesses the South African record with market inquiries, the equivalent of market investigations. Market inquiries have been an important tool to address competition problems reflecting entrenched positions of firms with market power in key sectors. Inquiries have been completed into banking, private healthcare, liquefied petroleum gas, grocery retail, and data services (inquiries in passenger transport and online intermediation platforms are underway). The authors find that the inquisitorial process has been very valuable in identifying and remedying competition issues more expeditiously than the adversarial process in enforcement investigations. This has been the case both where independent panels and the Commission’s own team conducted the inquiries. Issues relating to competition policy questions such as barriers to entry and the ability of smaller firms to compete have also been canvassed in inquiries. Recommendations on these ‘competition-plus’ issues have tended to require improved regulation and/or related policy measures, for which inquiries have played an important agenda-setting role. Inquiries have also been used to address wider questions of public policy, and here, while important data and analysis have been brought into the public domain, the impacts are less clear.