Jose Elias Del Hierro of Parra, Rodriguez, Cavelier discusses practices against free competition in Colombia.

In 1959, with the enactment of Law 155, Colombia established its first legislation seeking to prevent restrictive trade practices.

Such legislation and its modifications and additions prohibits covenants or agreements with the direct or indirect purpose of limiting production, supply, distribution or consumption of raw materials, national or foreign products, goods or services, and, in general, all kinds of practices and procedures or systems tending to limit free competition and maintain and/or fix unfair prices.

To develop these general principles, a series of regulations have been issued to date, as follows:

1. Agreements against free competition

The following are those agreements which, although not executed in writing, are considered against free competition:

1.1 Agreements whose purpose or effect is to, directly or indirectly, fix prices.

1.2 Agreements whose purpose or effect is to determine discriminatory sale or commercialization conditions for third parties.

1.3 Agreements whose purpose or effect is to share markets among producers or distributors.

1.4 Agreements whose purpose or effect is to assign production or supply quotas.

1.5 Agreements whose purpose or effect is to assign, distribute or limit the sources of supply of productive raw materials.

1.6 Agreements whose purpose or effect is to limit technical development.

1.7 Agreements whose purpose or effect is to subordinate the supply of a product to the acceptance of additional obligations that, because of their nature, do not constitute the purpose of the business, regardless of other provisions.

1.8 Agreements whose purpose or effect is to abstain from producing goods or services or affect levels of production.

1.9 Agreements whose purpose is the collusion in the presentation of bids or those whose effect is to distribute contract awards, arrange bid processes or fix the terms of the proposals.

2. Actions against free competition.

The following is a list of actions against free competition:

2.1 To infringe rules on advertising contained in the consumer protection statute.

2.2 To influence someone to increase the prices of their products or services or to desist of their intention to lower prices.

2.3 To refuse to sell or render services to an enterprise or to discriminate against such enterprise whenever such action may be understood as a retaliation to its policies on prices.

Conclusion:

As we can see, Colombia has one of the oldest legislations in Latin-America devoted to prohibiting restrictive trade practices; a legislation based in the most developed models at that time (1959).

Currently, such legislation is in permanent development towards international unification of these issues.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.