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World Competition Day

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The international competition community observes 5th December as the World Competition Day and through various activities seeks to bring consumers benefits of well-functioning competition environment. This year is dedicated to „Competition issues in public procurement“.
 
Public procurement is the purchase of goods or services by the public sector and generally accounts for large share of public expenditures. Competition concerns occurring in the public procurement process are mainly related to collusive behaviour of bidders, so called „bid rigging“. Cooperation may take a form of an agreement on price fixing, sharing contracts or other form of coordination, including an agreement on non-submitting a bid or an agreement on rotation of contracts. The absence of well-functioning competition thus prevents from effective use of public resources and negatively affects an economy.  
 
Detection of cartels in public procurements belongs currently to the priorities of the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic. Since they represent horizontal agreements between direct competitors, which are considered as hard-core cartels, pursuant to the Act on Protection of Competition a cartel participant may be fined up to 10 % of its turnover for the proceeding closed accounting period. In the last year the Antimonopoly Office has fined several companies in the sectors of information technology, construction, education and geodesy and cartography for such anti-competitive conduct. The Antimonopoly Office will continue in cartel detection and will allocate here its capacities.