Mr. David Miller, the FTC’s Executive Director, presented Jamaica’s experience in establishing effective competition authorities at the CARICOM Competition Commission’s Capacity Building Workshop on Competition Enforcement held in Castries, St. Lucia, from June 17 to 19, 2024. Senior public officials from the Government of St. Lucia attended the workshop, which was funded by The Commonwealth.
Over its 30 years of operation, the Jamaican Fair Trading Commission (FTC) has consistently demonstrated the necessary characteristics of an effective competition agency, including accountability, accessibility, fairness, confidentiality, and communication. Mr. Miller utilized interactive sessions to describe the core functions of competition agencies, highlighting enforcement, advocacy, and public education, and shared Jamaica’s experience in carrying out these functions. He emphasized that Jamaica’s journey demonstrates a specific institutional design necessary for these functions to be effective, outlining key components such as operations, legal framework, investigative process, decision-making, cooperation, institutional memory, and sound infrastructure.
According to Mr. Miller, overall agency effectiveness can be achieved only through proper institutional design, sound policy and strategy implementation, capacity building, knowledge retention, technological advancements, collaboration with MDAs, and a culture of periodic assessment. These elements are essential to realize the benefits of competition to the economy, businesses and consumers.
Mr. Miller’s presentation is included here