By ALICE NACHILEMBE
The Competition Consumer Protection Commissioner says it has steadfastly carried on with its mandates, achieving significant goals in the first half of 2021.
CCPC Senior Public Relations Officer Namukolo Kasumpa said that it has remained proactive in its vigilance to protecting market competition and to empower and protect consumers.
Ms Kasumpa said the Commission has resolveed1,248 cases involving 1,617 provisions in the first half of the year 2021.
She said an amount of K1,177,790.36 was recovered in refunds and K962,405.86 was recovered in replacements, repairs or re-performance of services.
Ms Kasumpa said the total amount recovered was K2,140,196.22 which is the value of goods and services consumers would have lost.
She said the Commission observed that the majority of consumer complaints were from the insurance, retail, microfinance, ICT and banking sectors which accounted for 88% of the cases.
Ms Kasumpa said in the first half of the year 2021, the Commission in conjunction with local authorities conducted 18 inspections with 336 trading premises being inspected in different districts.
She said goods worth K77, 383.05 were seized for destruction because they had either expired, passed their best before date or were improperly labelled.
“The value of merger investments the Commission has facilitated from January 2021 to June 2021 is USD 406,200,747 with over 4187 direct and indirect jobs created.
“Over 30,344 direct and indirect jobs maintained jobs which could have otherwise been lost without the Commission’s intervention in facilitating the timely execution and conclusion of these merger transactions,” she said.
Ms Kasumpa said during this pandemic-induced economic slowdown, the Commission fully recognizes its crucial responsibility of protecting consumers and businesses alike from the increased risk of anti-competitive behavior and expanded capacity of dominant players to abuse market power to the detriment of Zambian consumers and local Small and medium Enterprises (SMEs).
