CUTS Institute for Regulation & Competition

CIRC’s MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT IN 2013
2013 was one to remember as engaging, creative and inspiring for CIRC as team has given a fresh thrust to our continuing work on Competition Law and Economic Regulations. We are happy to share with you our major achievements that have made 2013 a success for us and inspired us to take a few bold steps into the future.

ACADEMIC OUTREACH
After rich international experience CIRC also held capacity building and training programmes for the national audience.  With Summer and Winter Courses on ‘Competition law and Practice in India’ held for students; CIRC captured vast national audience who were offered strategically structured course for better understanding.

Forwarding with its capacity building initiatives, CIRC organised its first Faculty Development Programme. The participation response was overwhelming with faculties from leading law and business schools.

Moving a step further, the New Year would be marked by announcement of the first National Essay Writing Competition on competition law & policy and economic regulations, wherein cash awards and certificates of commendation would be given to the winners.

COURSES
The flagship course of CIRC in association with National Law University New Delhi (NLUD), Diploma and Certificate course in ‘Competition Policy & Law’ has been a popular course choice among the students. The first convocation for the said course was held on 21st December 2013 at NLUD Campus.

Another pioneering initiative of CIRC was to launch online courses on ‘Competition Act, 2002’ and ‘Law and Practice of PPPs in India’ for inter-disciplinary professionals and students. These courses have been uniquely structured and have duration of 08 weeks. These courses aim to strengthen executive education in the areas of Competition Policy and Law, Regulatory issues with facilitating classroom free, self-paced and interactive learning environment.

The coming year of 2014 will see launch of various other online courses including, Energy Law & Policy, Law & Economics of Land, Practice and Policy of Public Procurement and Economics for Competition Law & Policy, among others.

RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS
The year 2013 was marked by two significant research projects that CIRC undertook. The first being, project entitled ‘Competition Reforms in Key Markets for Enhancing Social & Economic Welfare in Developing Countries’ (CREW). It is a multi-country project supported by DFID (United Kingdom) and BMZ (Germany) facilitated by GIZ (Germany) where CIRC is the implementation partner along with CUTS International for India.

And the second was a research project on ‘Data Privacy & Information Security for K12 students in India’with support from SafeGov Inc.

CIRC launched the second edition of Policy Souvenir, titled ‘The Interface between Business Strategy and Competition Law’ in the month of November. CIRC has also come out with working paper series and issue note series touching upon various competition and economic regulatory issues emerging from time to time. Two newsletters namely, CIRComp Weekly, a weekly e-newsletter on trans-boundary competition law updates, and PPP Bulletin, a bi-weekly e-newsletter on trans-boundary  PPP and infrastructure news updates, is being circulated among the course participants and other industry professionals. Also a Case Bank has been prepared comprising of case studies to support both CA02 and PPP online courses.

CONFERENCES & EVENTS
A seminar was organised in Kuala Lumpur on Data Privacy & Information Security in the month of June last year by Cyber Security Malaysia in association with CIRC and Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia (PAGE). The seminar was attended by distinguished audience from MyCC, Student’s Rights Activist Group, and Malaysian Cyber Security Authorities among others. This was followed by two webinars held in the month of September and October respectively on ‘Interface between IP Laws and Competition Laws in India’.

CUTS International and CIRC pursuant to their agenda of deliberating and discussing key economic and governance challenges on competition and economic regulation at an international level, organised the 3rd Biennial International Conference on ‘Competition Reforms: Emerging Challenges in a Globalising World’, in the month of November 2013. The idea for this biennial series was conceived in the backdrop of developing countries concerns of frequent regulatory failures that undermine the capacity to achieve policies important to citizens and consumers and saw multi-country participation.

Dr. Arvind Mayaram
Chairman, Managing Committee

Procurement of goods, services and technologies is an indispensable part of government operations for smooth functioning of an economy. The nature and intensity of procurement, however, varies in accordance with the type of economy and as per the stage of development of a country. Owing to the quantum of procurement undertaken by a Government, countries are required to ensure that the procurement undertaken by them is cost-effective. Government procurement is an important element of the Indian economy. It is not only for smooth operations of governmental agencies and departments but also utilised as a tool for promoting and sustaining economic growth and socio-economic development.

The core objectives of government procurement are: value for money (efficiency) in procuring goods, services and technologies; integrity; accountability; equal opportunities and equal treatment of suppliers; fair treatment to suppliers and efficient implementation of policies in procurement. Government procurement comprises of about 25 to 30 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Given current initiatives for its strengthening and with sufficient consideration to economic and social concerns, it can foster positive changes in several respects – it can sharpen the evolving competition regime of India; enhance producer and consumer welfare through more trade and competition; buttress the mainstreaming of the SME sector into its increasingly market-based economy and ensure better access to essential facilities for its people.

India evinced an interest in playing a greater role in the foreign public procurement market by negotiating the subject in the Japan-India free trade agreement and it is also a part of negotiations in the EU-India free trade agreement. Furthermore, in 2010, India attained an observer’s status in the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement. This has raised considerable interest and debate among various stakeholders as to India’s potential gains and losses in case of its possible accession to the WTO GPA. At national level, the presence of multiple procurement rules, guidelines and procedures issued by multiple agencies results in confusion, non-transparency in procedures and can deleteriously impact the efficiency of the system.

Recently, there have been some major developments in the direction of improving the public procurement framework in India. With the release of the new General Financial Rules of 2017, the government has attempted to keep pace with the imperatives of a modernising Indian economy. Along with the new Manuals for procurement of Goods and for procurement of Consultancy and other services also released in 2017, the developments have significance for the government contracting market, valued annually on average at the substantial figure of about 30 per cent of India’s GDP and covering almost every sphere of government activity. A new policy has also been promulgated which aims to give preference to domestically manufactured goods with a view to promote ‘Make in India’ initiative. The new GFR promotes procurement through Government E-marketplace (GEM). The Government is working towards a one stop Government e-Marketplace (GeM) to facilitate online procurement of common use Goods & Services required by various Government Departments / Organizations / PSUs. GeM aims to enhance transparency, efficiency and speed in public procurement. It provides the tools of e-bidding, reverse e-auction and demand aggregation to facilitate the government users achieve the best value for their money.

Rolling out a national system of e-procurement in all central departments and states calls for building and strengthening capacity of all the stakeholders for achieving fair and efficient procurement system in India, and these professional courses on Public Procurement supported by the World Bank will cater to this vacuum and will help build a pool of professional public procurement managers.

This will help in achieving the long term objective of establishing a more efficient government procurement system in India with greater transparency, efficiency and good governance for the benefit of economy and consumers at large. Our institute, with significant experience of dealing with research and policy issues related to public procurement also, is a proud partner in providing these professional courses in public procurement in India. We will continue in our endeavor to train and build capacity of stakeholders for achieving these avowed objectives.

CIRC
Ms Nidhi Maheshwari, Chief Operating Officer
Mr Saket Sharma, Course Coordinator
CUTS Institute for Regulation & Competition
D 72 First Floor Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016
Tel : +91-11-26463022 – 23
Fax : +91-11-41621232
Email : circ@circ.in
Web : www.circ.in