The Egyptian Competition Authority Takes Action Against Bid Rigging

The Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) has grown increasingly concerned with bid rigging in public tenders. To confront collusions between competitors in public tenders the ECA has increasingly scrutinized public tenders. A particular focus was the energy sector. These investigations, led to the ECA discovering a number of violations in two sub-sectors, the markets for transmission towers and for glaverniced iron pipes. Violations discovered in both markets related to public tenders of Egyptian electricity suppliers.

The ECA found that 10 companies in the transmission towers market had violated the Egyptian Competition Law by unlawfully exchanging information and colluding in public tenders. Furthermore, the authority determined that 5 companies active in the galverniced iron pipes had unlawfully colluded in several public tenders. According to the findings of the ECA these practices negatively impacted quality and pricing of offers received by the electricity