The Commissioners and Technical Staff of the Jamaica Fair Trading Commission (JFTC) participated in the CARIFORUM Level 2 Training in Competition for Staff of Commissions, which was held during March 18-21, 2025, via Zoom. Up to 65 persons were in attendance during each of the first three days, and 140 persons attended on the closing day.
The workshop was a capacity-building initiative for competition authorities within CARIFORUM under the EU-funded project entitled “Consultancy for Capacity Building in Competition, Public Procurement and Customs and Trade Facilitation”, and aimed to strengthen the specific knowledge and skills that enforcers of competition law require to effectively investigate competition cases. The facilitator of the workshop was Dr. Frédéric Jenny, a professor of Economics at ESSEC Business School in Paris, former Supreme Court Judge of the Commercial Division in France, and the Chairman of the OECD Competition Commission, and the OECD Global Forum.
The workshop covered key areas in competition law such as legal and economic approaches to competition law analysis; direct and indirect evidence in cartel enforcement; abuse of dominance; mergers and acquisitions; standard of proof; sanctions and remedies; and interagency cooperation. The sessions blended legal and economic perspectives with case studies from Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, and the wider CARICOM. It emphasized investigative techniques, evidentiary standards, policy impact assessments, and regulatory collaboration, ensuring participants gain practical knowledge to enhance competition enforcement in their jurisdictions.
On the workshop’s closing day, representatives of the regional competition authority, CARICOM Competition Commission (CCC), and several national authorities participated by presenting on their experiences in relation to sector regulators. Mr. Marc Jones, Senior Legal Counsel at the CCC (and former Legal Officer at the JFTC) presented JFTC’s experience in investigating the 2012 Digicel/Claro acquisition, which involved court judgements on the JFTC’s jurisdiction regarding the telecommunications sector.
Also on the closing day, Executive Director, Mr. David Miller, presented the JFTC’s experience on the topic “Priority Setting and Assessment of Effectiveness of the Actions of Competition Authorities”. The presentation is attached here.