Anti-competitive agreements are agreements among competitors to prevent, restrict or distort competition. Section 34 of the Competition Act prohibits agreements, decisions and practices that are anti-competitive. A particularly serious type of anti-competitive agreement would be those made by cartels.
A typical example of anti competitive horizontal agreement would be agreement between two manufacturers of coal that they will not compete on price with each other.
While engaging in a business activity in India, the parties to an agreement although have the freedom of trade are prohibited from entering into agreements that are anti-competitive in nature. Anti- Competitive Agreements are those agreements that have their object in furtherance of or prevent, restrict or distort competition in India. Competition Act of 2002 defines the kind of anti-competitive agreements that cannot be made in India. According to Section 3 of the Competition Act, any agreements entered into are deemed to be anti-competitive if it falls into any of the categories as mentioned in the section.
Entities Covered under the Anti-competitive Agreements
Subsection (1) identifies the entities that are included in this section. These include agreements between:
Enterprises
Association of Enterprises
Enterprise and Association of Enterprises
Persons
Association of persons
Person and Association of Persons
Person and enterprise
Association of person and enterprise
Association of enterprise and persons
Association of persons and association of enterprises The Competition Act Expressly prohibits any agreement that falls within any of the mentioned categories. Sub-section (2) expressly prohibits the entities mentioned above from entering into any agreements about production, supply, distribution, acquisition or control of goods or services which have the potential to cause harm or are likely to cause Appreciable Adverse Effect on Competition (AAEC) within India. AAEC can be defined as a phenomenon which is observed in the case of any of the provisions of this Act is contravened. It includes the negative effect that it creates on the market players and healthy competition in the market. The ambit of Section 3 is wide enough because it not only includes those agreements that are expressly stated but also implied agreements that come under its purview.
Aishwarya Says:
I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.
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In the year 2021, we wrote about 1000 Inspirational Women In India, in the year 2022, we would be featuring 5000 Start Up Stories.