Anti-profiteering body's merger with CCI faces obstacles

The National Anti-Profiteering Authority (NAA), which fines companies for profiteering in the goods and services tax (GST), and the antitrust watchdog Competition Commission of India (CCI) has encountered a number of administrative difficulties, including the limited time period of just over a month before the NAA's term expires.

According to a person with knowledge of the government's discussions on the issue, the obstacles include a lack of funding and infrastructure needed for the CCI to take on an additional mandate, differences in the structure of the two regulators' investigative arms, and the CCI's current cap of three members in addition to its chairman.

While the government opposes extending the NAA's term, which was initially established for two years in 2017 and twice extended until the end of November 2022, the alternative solution of merging with the CCI is experiencing a number of administrative difficulties. It is challenging for the government to bring the GST-related anti-profiteering ecosystem to a close because there are profiteering complaints that have not yet been resolved even while there is a potential that new complaints will surface.

This is despite the fact that the NAA was established in 2017 as a short-term remedy to stop companies from abusing the transition to the new indirect tax system by making excessive profits.

Additionally, there are currently pending petitions that question the constitutionality of the anti-profiteering system. There may be more allegations of profiteering against real estate developers in the future because real estate projects have lengthy gestation periods and several projects that began before 2017 are still unfinished.

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