Kenyan companies may not be declared dominant any time soon.
This is after the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) said it would have to first hire an international firm to analyse the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors before declaring any company dominant.
Speaking at a press conference, CA Director General Francis Wangusi intimated that currently, there are no mechanisms which can be used to determine abuse of market dominance by any company.
He said that it was for that reason that they would hire a firm, which will come up with a report spelling out what exactly it means for a company to abuse its dominance in the market.
According to Wangusi, the report analysis of the market by the firm is estimated to take atleast 18 months.
This means that even if parliament enacted the 10 proposed dominance laws, they would have to wait unti 2017 to take effect.
This comes as a relief for Safaricom which could have been declared dominant by mid-June should the laws have be passed.
The ICT ministry took the proposal to reign in the company's dominance in the market to parliamnet, saying that the move would give other players in the sector a chance to compete.
See Ministry Seeks To Reduce Safaricom's Dominance
Safaricom has however maintained that it is not dominant.
The CEO, Bob Collymore, said the company is competing at a global level with multi-billion dollar companies like Google.
See This is Why Safaricom Believes it Should Not Be Declared Dominant
The proposed dominance laws gives the CA power to automatically declare dominant, any telecommunications firm with a market share of more than 50 per cent.
This will undoubtedly affect Safaricom which currently enjoys over 60 percent of the market share.
Under the proposed laws, firms face penalties of billions of shillings if found guilty of abusing their dominant position.
Wangusi sought to assure companies that declaration of dominance was not meant to be punishment to any of them.
He said that dominant firms attract more scrutiny because any anti-competitive action could affect the market as a whole, Business Daily reports.
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