Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel has announced the publishing of a draft notice in the Government Gazette on August 31 which sets out proposed terms for a new block exemption for small-, medium-sized and microenterprises (SMMEs) to be exempted from certain categories of prohibited agreement practices laid out in Competition Act. Speaking at the sixteenth Annual Competition Law, Economics and Policy Conference in Sandton, Patel said the purpose of the exemption would be to enable greater collaboration between SMMEs that would otherwise contravene Sections 4.1 and 5.1 of the Competition Act.
