January 17, 2024
Japan Fair Trade Commission
(Guide for the Design and Implementation of an Effective Antimonopoly Act Compliance Program)
Today, I would like to talk about the "Guide for the Design and Implementation of an Effective Antimonopoly Act Compliance Program: Focusing on Responses to Cartels and Bid-rigging" (hereinafter referred to as "Guide") announced on December 21 last year.
In order to promote fair and free competition in Japan, it is necessary to achieve an environment where competitive business activities are conducted autonomously by eliminating the Antimonopoly Act (hereinafter referred to as "AMA") violations through strict enforcement of the law and promoting compliance related to the AMA in individual companies.
From the viewpoint of supporting companies' efforts to comply with the AMA, the JFTC has conducted questionnaires and interviews to various companies, and collected and published the results of these surveys as reports.
The information collected through the surveys contains a lot of examples of good practices regarding AMA compliance, which have been accumulated to a certain extent recently. Accordingly, while referring to similar guides prepared and published by other jurisdictions, international organizations, the JFTC has made and published the Guide that outlines best practices to help individual companies design and implement an effective AMA compliance programs mainly related to cartels and bid-rigging.
The Guide has the characteristic in that it comprehensively and systematically organizes the components of an effective AMA compliance program, its significance, its essence, and its points of attention. Another characteristic of the Guide is that it introduces the real opinions of companies which are actively engaged in the AMA compliance, as seen in the questionnaires and interviews conducted in the past fact-finding surveys, as examples of good practices. The Guide is voluminous, but we do not require that all of the practices in the Guide be implemented perfectly. We believe that it is important for companies to prioritize efforts that are likely to be cost-effective and gradually expand the scope of their efforts depending on respective situations and risk of the AMA violations. We hope that companies will make use of the Guide in their efforts for AMA compliance.
The JFTC will continue to actively engage in activities to support and advocate companies' efforts to comply with the AMA through the dissemination of the Guide.
（Tentative translation）
Today, I would like to talk about the "Guide for the Design and Implementation of an Effective Antimonopoly Act Compliance Program: Focusing on Responses to Cartels and Bid-rigging" (hereinafter referred to as "Guide") announced on December 21 last year.
In order to promote fair and free competition in Japan, it is necessary to achieve an environment where competitive business activities are conducted autonomously by eliminating the Antimonopoly Act (hereinafter referred to as "AMA") violations through strict enforcement of the law and promoting compliance related to the AMA in individual companies.
From the viewpoint of supporting companies' efforts to comply with the AMA, the JFTC has conducted questionnaires and interviews to various companies, and collected and published the results of these surveys as reports.
The information collected through the surveys contains a lot of examples of good practices regarding AMA compliance, which have been accumulated to a certain extent recently. Accordingly, while referring to similar guides prepared and published by other jurisdictions, international organizations, the JFTC has made and published the Guide that outlines best practices to help individual companies design and implement an effective AMA compliance programs mainly related to cartels and bid-rigging.
The Guide has the characteristic in that it comprehensively and systematically organizes the components of an effective AMA compliance program, its significance, its essence, and its points of attention. Another characteristic of the Guide is that it introduces the real opinions of companies which are actively engaged in the AMA compliance, as seen in the questionnaires and interviews conducted in the past fact-finding surveys, as examples of good practices. The Guide is voluminous, but we do not require that all of the practices in the Guide be implemented perfectly. We believe that it is important for companies to prioritize efforts that are likely to be cost-effective and gradually expand the scope of their efforts depending on respective situations and risk of the AMA violations. We hope that companies will make use of the Guide in their efforts for AMA compliance.
The JFTC will continue to actively engage in activities to support and advocate companies' efforts to comply with the AMA through the dissemination of the Guide.
（Tentative translation）
