KUWAIT: A photo showing the speakers at a seminar titled ‘National Assembly: Between commercial monopoly and the nation’s interests,’ held Sunday night. — Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat KUWAIT: A photo showing the speakers at a seminar titled ‘National Assembly: Between commercial monopoly and the nation’s interests,’ held Sunday night. — Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat

KUWAIT: Speakers at a seminar titled 'National Assembly: between commercial monopoly and the nation's interests' unanimously agreed that parliamentary proposals and laws on commercial monopoly do not serve consumers, and called for amending them. Speaking at the seminar held in Andalus, Nasser Al-Shulaimi, Secretary General of the '11/11' movement stressed that they were not against merchants and were only fighting greedy ones, which were few but had enough power to have some legislations passed like a 'shadow government.'

Former minister Jassim Al-Oun stressed that governments worldwide have defined agendas and programs and that bills and parliamentary proposals do change by changing some people. "Our government lacks such concepts," he underlined, noting that once the government proposes a bill, the bill is subjected to change according to the interests of the group new ministers assuming power belong to.

Oun added that comparing various proposals made under the same name, one would find 180 degree changes, though the monopoly law affects all citizens and expats. "The government seems to be held hostage by each group for a while," he said, noting that it was politically unacceptable to change government policies when changing ministers.

Enormous burdens

MP Mohammed Tana Al-Azmi said that the agencies' bill would be reviewed today and that both the government and the parliament have enormous burdens and need to join hands to fight corruption and get the development wheel moving forward. Azmi added that he was surprised with amendments the financial committee made to article one of the bill in a way that alienates the principle of banning monopoly. "Laws should not be set to meet certain interests or agendas," he underlined.

Also speaking at the seminar was management sciences professor Dr Yousif Al-Mutairi, who stressed that the articles discussed would make the law come out differently and that certain parties were actually working in favor of enhancing monopoly. Representative of the Civil Society for Consumer Protection Mohammed Al-Ali said that the state was heading towards reducing subsidies and at the same time try to keep prices under control. "With monopolizing certain goods, prices will never go down," he said.

Former minister Ahmed Baqer stressed that Kuwait still has only one stock market while the UAE has two. "Competitiveness is very important and we had a competitiveness law passed in 2007, but it was never put into practice," he rued.

Victimizing citizens

Meanwhile, MP Faisal Al-Kandari strongly rejected passing the commercial agencies law in a way that takes merchants' side at the expense of citizens. "Passing the law with some amendments that changed its essence would victimize citizens and place them under the mercy of merchants," he said, noting that all anti-citizen and pro-merchant amendments will be rejected. Kandari added that the law had been set to protect agents' rights and achieve honest competitiveness amongst commercial agencies in order to eventually provide consumers with the best goods and services. "How can competitiveness be achieved when the law was amended in a way that bans the presence of more than one agent or distributor?" he wondered.

By Meshaal Al-Enezi and A Saleh