ICCC looks at bid rigging

By PETER ESILA
BID rigging or collusive bidding as well as a focus on accessing State entities’ revenue generation, among others, will now be the focus of the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC).
Commissioner and chief executive officer Paulus Ain said this on Friday after launching of ICCC’s 2020-2025 Corporate Plan and new corporate attire for staff.
The launch was witnessed by the Treasurer first secretary Dr Misty Baloiloi and advisers Hakaua Harry and Lady Hitolo Amet.
“We are now changing and moving into this space so we do a lot of investigative work to ensure that collusive bidding, or bid rigging, we see in the many tendering process, there are some elements of such behaviour in the market place but we have not gone down that far to look at it, so in the next corporate life of ICCC, we are putting more emphasis into that,” Ain said.
He said the revenue generation of State-owned enterprises (SOE) was a long-term concern.
He said the ICCC’s had a regulatory framework that provided the incentives for SOEs to make revenue but to date the results had not been good and the businesses continued operate in a relaxed environment. “Now we are saying you are not making a lot of money, you are just sitting around, so we are setting a maximum revenue under a new regulatory framework, you go out and make the money and you give this revenue back to Government,” he said.
Ain said on the consumer protect front, he now wanted ICCC presence in all centres of PNG.
“ICCC does not have a presence around the country, the recent exercise that we have undertaken on price gouging, we have learnt a lot of lessons that the ICCC needs to
be out there in the provinces,” he said.
“We have successfully put up a new structure, it has gone before the Department of Planning and Monitoring.
“We do not want to have a staff sitting in the province, become too complacent and compromising with business houses, they must be able to investigate.”