On February 10-11, Cairo (Egypt) hosted the Meeting of the BRICS Working Group for the Research of Competition Issues in Food Markets. The event was organized by the International BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre jointly with the Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA). The BRICS Working Group for the Research of Competition Issues in Food Markets is co-chaired by the FAS of Russia and the Competition Commission of South Africa.
Volatility of prices for agricultural commodities is a growing food security concern internationally, with the greatest burden of uncertainty falling on the developing and least developed countries, the most vulnerable regions of the planet.
At the meeting of the BRICS Coordination Committee on antimonopoly policy that took place on July, 2nd 2024 in Geneva as part of Russia`s BRICS Chairship, the competition authorities of the BRICS countries supported the idea of undertaking a BRICS-wide inquiry into global grain trade to the extent it affects their national markets. That was confirmed by the latest meeting of the BRICS WG on Food Markets in Johannesburg on September 3rd, 2024.
Deciphering concentrated areas of global food value chains and remedying the negative effects of concentration is a task for competition authorities that are well-positioned to deal with anticompetitive abuses of economic power by incumbent, concentrated market players. With this meeting, the BRICS competition authorities, academics and high-level experts from the international organizations reviewed the interim results of the ongoing study, discussed the systemic problems in the functioning of the global food value chain and grain trade in particular and focused on the possible advancement in competition mechanisms to ensure food security.