"KTC damages the Competitiveness of Company "

It is indicated that Korea Fair Trade Commission(KTC) has squeezed a competitiveness of Korean companies because it has broken into a market competition on its own authority. Also, people has criticized that FTC is short of a political independence and specialty.

‘Citizens United for Better Society(CUBS) held a symposium to find out a right direction of fair trade policy in Sogang University on October 25.

Prof. Jeong Yongdeok, said in a speech “KTC has charged a lot of expenses to the companies and economy by giving a command to correct, not based on the correct economic theory.”

KTC charged KW 160.2 billion to 225 companies only for one year of 2001 and gave the correction commands of 347 cases and brought 66 suits. Also, in 2000, FTC charged KRW 223.3 billion to 113 companies.

Professor Jeon said, “There are a lot of damages of resources and time for companies to receive the investigation of FTC, the bad effect has depressed the corporate competitiveness due to the of the fair trade.”

He analyzed “The existing fair trade law is not based on the exact monopolization definition, and has the anti capitalistic elements.”

Cho Seong-Bong, senior researcher of Korea Economic Research Institute(KERI) said “The fair trade policy has met the public sensitivity relying on a trend of the opinion over a scientific analysis or objective basis. It has emphasized excessively on the process and results and so it hasn’t facilitated the effective competition.”

To execute the fair trade policy reasonably, he insisted on △ removing the policy verdict and control function, △Separating the corporate governance structure and improvement policy of financial structure from the fair trade policy, △abolishing the economic strength-intensive restriction policy, and △strengthening the specialty and independence of FTC.

Lee Jae-gu, assistant manager of monopoly policy, FTC emphasized, “There are a lot of bad effects that the group leader who has 4% of equity has control the whole affiliates by using the circulating funds. We need the economic power-intensive restriction policy between the market regulation system is operated.”

He added, “Some economists insist that the fair trade law has only one objective, but there must be the sufficient understanding in the aspect of sociality and time of the law.”

Kwang-Am Cheon iam@donga.com