CCCS issues guide for environmental sustainability collaboration

The note addresses competition in sustainable business partnerships.

The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) has issued the Environmental Sustainability Collaboration Guidance Note (ESCGN) to help businesses pursue such collaborations without harming competition.

The ESCGN seeks to clarify how CCCS will assess business collaborations to address compliance and competition concerns. The ESCGN covers:

• Examples of collaborations pursuing environmental sustainability objectives[3] that would typically not be harmful to competition, such as collaborations that do not affect how businesses compete with each other (i.e., does not involve price, quantity, quality, choice or innovation relating to the goods/services supplied) or where businesses are unable to carry out the activities independently;
• Conditions under which competition concerns are less likely to arise from such collaborations, and how businesses can therefore potentially minimise such concerns in their collaborations; and
• How CCCS would assess whether potentially anti-competitive collaborations may still qualify for the Net Economic Benefit (“NEB”) exclusion such that they do not contravene the Competition Act.[4] Given that agreements pursuing environmental sustainability objectives may benefit society at large (e.g., reducing adverse environmental impact arising from the production process), where appropriate, CCCS will consider relevant economic benefits accruing to Singapore as a whole in its economic assessment, as compared to CCCS’s usual NEB assessment framework, which generally considers only the economic benefits accruing within the markets affected by the agreement.

CCCS encourages businesses to self-assess their collaborations using the ESCGN. They may also notify CCCS for guidance should they wish to seek more legal advice regarding their collaborations.