Antitrust developments and enforcement activity in South-east Asia: January to March 2023

16 June 2023

In this issue of the Competition Law Quarterly, we highlight notable antitrust developments and enforcement activity in South-east Asia which took place in the first quarter of 2023, including the following:

• Indonesia: The Indonesia Competition Commission’s (“KPPU”) investigation against the alleged cooking cartel by 27 entities entered its final phase of examination. KPPU also took enforcement action against tying/bundling and bid-rigging conduct against several entities.
• Malaysia: In Malaysia, the Competition Appeal Tribunal unanimously affirmed the Malaysia Competition Commission’s infringement findings under section 4 of the Malaysian Competition Act 2010 in respect of the standardisation of prices for handling long length cargo between certain port services providers for warehouse storage services for import and export cargo.
• Singapore: The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore issued a decision relating to merger control, as well as an enforcement action against unfair practices under the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act 2003.
• Thailand: In Thailand, four related cases in the real estate development business market were found by the Trade Competition Commission of Thailand to have breached the requirement on specified period for notification of a business merger, and contravened section 51(1) of the Trade Competition Act B.E. 2560.
• New notification thresholds: On the policy front, both the Philippine Competition Commission and KPPU issued new notification thresholds.

For more, please click here for an overview of notable antitrust developments in South-east Asia during the period from January to March 2023. To see if there has been any enforcement activity in your sector in the first quarter of 2023, please refer to the overview chart here.