[Draft] iamai submission to Committee on Digital Competition Law

(iv) Notifying mergers and acquisitions
According to the Report, transactions that do not require an approval under the Competition Act will still have to be notified to the CCI by SIDIs if, either the other merging entity or the target provides services in the digital sector or enables collection of data.
It is IAMAI’s humble submission that the Competition (Amendment) Bill, 2022 already proposes introduction of a deal value threshold for notifying transactions to specifically capture additional transactions in the digital space. It is accordingly imperative to first gauge the impact of deal value thresholds before introduction of any further legislations to capture transactions in the digital market. Such proposals will only lead to increased burden for both players in the digital space as well as the CCI which is already overburdened.
(v) Failure to apply well established competition law concepts
The PFSC prohibits self-preferencing even though it may (not always) result in foreclosure, consumer harm, or both. All business models typically engage in some form or another of "self-preferencing" - because it can be efficient and consumer benefit maximizing. Hence, there should be a strong record showing which particular types of self-preferencing are harmful and why before applying any narrowly tailored restrictions on the particular form of self-preferencing identified.
By requiring designated SIDIs to not give preference to their own products over competitors’, the Big Tech Report aims to protect every single competitor, whether efficient or not, and not the competitive process. There may be instances where an e-commerce platform’s own product or service offerings are better than its competitors’. Even in such cases, the platform will not be able to display its own products at the beginning of organic searches. This will ultimately affect consumer interest and distort competition in favour of less efficient players.
5. There are Unintended Consequences of Inflexible and Disproportionate Regulation
As opposed to other forms of interventions currently available to regulators, legislative routes to intervene are often inflexible due to extensive process requirements and parliamentary reviews. Therefore, suitability of size-based ex-ante legislative interventions should be assessed after considering the following trade-offs:

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