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The International Network of Civil
Society Organisations on Competition (INCSOC) has been floated by
several civil society organisations as a coalition to promote a
healthy competition culture in the world.
The concept came out of the
extensive work on competition policy issues by Consumer Unity &
Trust Society (CUTS), which floated the idea as a result of a
path-breaking project on comparison of competition regimes in
developing countries (popularly called the 7-Up Project).
It revealed a crying need for
building a network of stakeholders, especially civil society, so
that the competition regimes at the national level could be
strengthened, and developed where absent.
As businesses and their
anti-competitive practices have become global in nature, the need
for consumer-oriented competition advocacy at the global level
cannot be understated.
Competition enforcement agencies of
different countries of the world have responded to such a
situation through the formation of International Competition
Network (ICN). Similarly, the Global Competition Forum (GCF) of
competition lawyers has been created under the auspices of the
International Bar Association. The OECD has floated a Global Forum
on Competition, which organizes annual meetings of competition
authorities, while Members of the WTO are also considering a
multilateral agreement on competition.
To complement such initiatives and
enhance peoples' participation, it is essential to establish a
similar network at the civil society level, whose voice on the
global stage is not as strong as is desirable. Thus, the network
is named as, “International Network of Civil Society Organisations
on Competition” (INCSOC).
The first general body meeting of
the Network was held on February 20, 2003. Over 35 organizations
that attended the meeting at Geneva, expressed a strong support
for such a network. These organizations came from diverse
countries such as Zambia, Bangladesh and Nepal from the LDC
category; India, Argentina and Brazil from the developing
category, and UK and USA from the developed category of nations.
The key point of agreement was that
research organizations and advocacy groups need to work more
closely together, in enriching their competition advocacy work,
which emerged as a critical learning from the 7-Up project
process. This is important since effective advocacy calls for a
solid research base to enable advocacy groups to convince citizens
and politicians that a competition culture is good for the
citizens, particularly the poor.
The network intends to put civil
society on the map of competition policy discussions at the
international and domestic arena. One of the first major projects
will be to prepare a World Competition Report by 2005. |
