he Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) held a seminar at the National University of Science & Technology Islamabad (NUST) as part of the ‘Competition Advocacy Academia Drive’ started by CCP to create awareness of the competition law.
Senior faculty members of NUST including Dr. Ashfaque Hassan Khan, Principal and Dean, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Dr. Verda Salman, and students in large number attended the seminar. In his opening remarks, Dr. Ashfaque Hassan Khan said that the role of regulatory bodies like CCP is extremely important in the era of economic liberalisation and deregulation where consumer protection becomes a priority area for the government. Anti-competitive behaviour such as cartelisation and abuse of dominance can inflict huge losses to the economy and that is where the CCP steps in to check these activities. He lauded the role of CCP in creating awareness of the competition law and taking steps for promoting its voluntary compliance and extended his full support to CCP in this regard. Dr. Shahzad Ansar, CCP Member Office of Fair Trade (OFT) and Advocacy, in his remarks highlighted the initiatives taken by CCP for creating awareness of the law and for promoting the voluntary compliance. The 16-week Module on “Economics and Competition Law” developed by CCP in collaboration with King’s College London is a recent initiative to introduce the competition law as an elective subject in universities, he informed. The presentations by CCP included an animation on Competition Law, a brief overview of the evolution of Competition Policy and Law worldwide, an outline of the Pakistan’s Competition Law, and an interesting presentation on the role of the Office of Fair Trade (OFT) in curbing deceptive marketing practices. The students and faculty members actively took part in the interactive session, which was followed by a detailed meeting between the CCP officials and the IIU’s faculty members to discuss the prospects of future collaboration for creating awareness and adoption of CCP’s Module in the syllabus of the university. The Competition Advocacy Academia Drive will see 11 seminars in the leading universities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi and 22 seminars in other cities of the four provinces. Seven seminars have been held in the twin cities, which will be followed by seminars in 4 other major universities. The second leg of the Academia Drive in the four provinces will start from February 2017.
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