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"content": "Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the punitive measures proposed under this Bill include a jail term. When we are talking about competition, we are speaking about corporate bodies. I do not know how we can jail a corporate body. I want to appeal, again, that as we define what the punitive measures are, it is important, that we realize that we are dealing with big firms, corporate bodies, and you cannot jail them. On mergers, looking at the Bill, although I have heard my colleagues say that using the regulations, they will come up with the thresholds, I think it would have been important to put the real thresholds in the main Bill. Mergers are about big companies; corporate bodies, that want to kill competition and big bodies that want to make profit from consumers. I was of the view that we should have defined the threshold within the main Bill. As we read it, if two kiosks within the same street were to merge and they refer to this Bill, they would qualify under this Bill. It would have been important for us to, perhaps, have defined under a merger, what a dominant undertaking would be and, perhaps, qualify the amount that such dominant undertaking would have in terms of assets and revenue. I, therefore, think that we need to open up a little, so that companies that are merging, and are not dominant, are not subjected to this Act. It is important that we allow mergers of small institutions, which are not subject to it. If we leave it open like this and someone plays a trick, they would make them subject to this Bill under the merger clause. On the tribunal, I am not sure--- I will be proposing that we have a tribunal. Under Cap 504, to the best of my knowledge over the past 21 years, there has only been one appeal. So, I am not sure whether we want to operationalize a defunct body that might just be there by way of a competition tribunal. Perhaps, we should allow that if there is an appeal, one can go directly to the High Court, rather than have a body that will not have any work designed for it. Finally, I want to appeal to my colleagues here. We have spoken, under Clause 62 about consumer welfare. I also realize that the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) has been dealing with consumer welfare in terms of standards of the goods that are supposed to be supplied or applied to this country. Two, I am aware that there is a Bill that is supposed to be brought before this House on consumer protection. I do not know whether it is wise to have three Bills that are talking about the same thing, because they would subject consumers to duplication by three particular sets of Acts. There is the particular clause of the proposed Bill, the section in the KEBS and, of course, the clause in the Consumer Protection Bill, which is coming before this House. I support this Bill. It is very good to ensure that we do not have unnecessary monopolistic companies that will take advantage of consumers. We also need to be alive to the fact that there is a Consumer Protection Bill coming up, and the KEBS also does some protection. We should not have three Acts that deal with consumers. With those few remarks, I support."
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