SEPT 11 — The Malaysia Competition Commission (MyCC) imposing RM10 million fines each on Malaysian Airline System Bhd (MAS) and AirAsia Bhd for the share swap deal engineered by the government via Khazanah Nasional Bhd has sent a strong signal — but exactly how effective is that going to be on existing would-be cartels within the country?

Based on past experience, MyCC’s “proposed decision” could easily end up being negated as the two airlines have 30 days to appeal and chances are they’d succeed — given the government’s hand both in forging the airlines tie-up and also in MyCC’s focus.

Scepticism aside, MyCC’s move may also signal changes afoot in other monopolies and chances are among the first to come into the spotlight may be Astro for its PayTV services.

While the immediate pressure may seem to be off in terms of English Premier League football live coverage after the content sharing deal with Telekom Malaysia Bhd’s HyppTV service, Astro retains exclusive control of several global news feeds — which ABNXcess may want access to — and also key entertainment channels in multiple languages.

How this shakes out in coming months will be interesting to watch and consumers would hopefully stand to gain rather than end up paying more than they anticipate.

Another monopoly that is likely to come under MyCC’s purview is the ongoing proposal by the Selangor government to take over Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (Syabas) — given that the latter holds exclusive rights to water supply in the Klang Valley together with Syarikat Pengeluar Air Selangor (Splash), Konsortium Abbas, Syabas and Puncak Niaga.

With the latest decision, will MyCC put a stop to this plan and force the water concessionaires to be run separately and in competition with each other? If so, will consumers finally be freed of unscheduled water supply disruptions or will the situation simply worsen?

There are no clear answers yet for such questions and it isn’t clear yet as to how far MyCC will go in executing its mandate. Could it go so far as to what the US did in breaking up AT&T decades ago into “Baby Bells” so as to foster greater competition?

If so, the immediate target that will loom on MyCC’s radar will be Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB), whose energy sector revamp MyPower is already looking to break up into separate generation and distribution arms.

Seeing how independent power producers have made tidy profits off TNB, will the tables now be turned by the independent distribution arm where consumers will hopefully have a choice as to which producer they’d have for regular supply or switching at will?

Interesting questions and hopefully the solutions will result in a more efficient system than we have now — though admittedly, TNB has been otherwise been doing a relatively decent job avoiding the nationwide blackout that hit us back in the early 1990s.

What could be even more radical would be MyCC turning its attention to the various subsidies given by the government — could this accelerate the process of us having to pay market prices?

Judging from how such anti-monopoly agencies work in the Americas and Europe, chances are this too could come to pass. After all, subsidies skew prices and benefit the select few who receive the payments — resulting in cost inefficiencies which could be better managed, if analysts and economists are to be believed.

In short, MyCC could become the scapegoat for a lot of changes to take place over the next few years in the name of improves pricing efficiencies — which would effectively end up with many Malaysians paying more as market forces are allowed to prevail rather than price controls. Are we all ready for this?

* Francis C. Nantha is business editor at The Malay Mail. He can be contacted at business@mmail.com.my

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online.