Morocco’s Competition Council, the country’s market watchdog, handed last year over 31 antitrust fines with a total value of MAD 72 billion ($7.2 billion) under a complaint lodged with the Council.
According to the council’s annual report for 2022, the fines were issued over failures to properly report on economic concentration operations.
The competition council has opened a procedure for the regularization of economic concentration operations carried out between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2021, without prior notification to the Conseil de la Concurrence.
In terms of litigation, 2022 was an exceptional year for the Competition Council, as for the first time since its creation, the Council activated its sanctioning powers under the aforementioned law number 104-12.
Regarding decision-making output, preventive merger control constituted the majority of the Competition Council’s deliberative workload, with a total of 142 decisions issued, accounting for over 78% of the overall total.
The remaining portion comprises decisions related to anti-competitive practices, representing 19% of the total, along with consultative activities accounting for 2%, as highlighted in the report.
The report further adds that the investigating departments of the council carried out a number of investigative acts, including hearings, requests for information, and market tests.
In order to examine the requests for approvals of economic concentration operations and to assess their possible effects on the competitive position of the parties and the competitive structure of the relevant markets defined, the investigation departments held more than 280 hearings.
In August, the Competition Council opened a probe into nine companies operating in the oil market.
In a statement, the council said that it had “sufficiently convincing evidence” that the nice companies were committing anti-competitive practices.
