The reaction from the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority to a Times of Malta editorial on the case of the Rabat petrol station owner, who had to reverse a decision to lower the price of diesel following pressure from the supplier, is not convincing enough.

The authority may have a broad area of responsibility, but a case of this nature deserves top consideration as it is of direct concern to thousands of people and to businesses as well. There is no question that investigation into the case involves a thorough analysis, but it would seem that the matter should not take this long to be resolved.

It is already over three months since the petrol station owner was stopped from selling diesel at a lower price than that quoted in a supposedly liberalised market. According to the petrol station owner, the supplier told him he would be denied a rise in the profit margin offered to him unless he restored the selling price to its previous level.

The Consumers’ Association has explained that it, too, has been pressing the authority for a decision. Its view makes the need for a ruling even more urgent as it believes that there is an organised cartel both in the diesel and petrol market. It has even informed the European Commission about this.

The Rabat petrol station owner’s case triggered an outrage at the time but, strangely, there has hardly been a whimper since then. Why is the consumer this docile? The matter ought to be of considerable importance for, if the petrol station owner is found to have been free to reduce the price of diesel, as he should have been, it would mean that consumers have been denied the reduction for three months already.

Even if the price reduction may have been too small to make any difference to the consumer, the principle that a retailer has a right to compete in the market needs to be well established. In a letter sent to this newspaper, the authority explained why it is taking it so long to make a decision. One reason is that, since an infringement of the Competition Act may subject the offending party to a fine of up to 10 per cent of its total turnover in the preceding business year, the office had to carefully and extensively analyse all the information before pronouncing itself.

It explained in some detail what this involved, arguing “an antitrust decision takes time to be pronounced in view of the complexity of the analysis involved”. As if to justify the time it is taking to come to a decision, the authority said the French competition authorities took three years to decide a case over a cartel in the fresh dairy product industry. The authority was referring to a ruling fining 10 companies €190 million for having taken part in a series of anticompetitive practices between 2006 and 2012.

The point made by the Malta authority over the time needed to go through the case is well taken. No one is downplaying the work it is doing in defence of the consumer either, although it would definitely be worthwhile for the authority to have an effective line of communication with the consumer.

But in a market this small, many would have thought that a case like that of the Rabat petrol station owner, and the claim made by the Consumers’ Association that there may be a cartel in the market, ought to be tackled with greater speed. It most certainly deserves priority consideration.

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