Housing for all, Advocata urges greater competition in construction industry

Panel consisting of Anu Anna Jo, Omar Raad Chowdhury, Dr. Malathy Knight, Dr. Joseph Wilson, moderated by Advocata Research Consultant Rehana Thowfeek

Advocata CEO Dhananath Fernando

Eng. Thilak Premalal

Dr. Roshan Perara

Athula Amarasekera

The Advocata Institute this week called for greater competition within the construction industry to ensure housing for all.

Advocata Institute in partnership with the Templeton Foundation hosted a conference on competition in the construction industry and launched the latest study “Housing for all: The role of competition policy in construction.”

The goal of the study was to highlight the need for competition within the construction industry, in Sri Lanka and its neighbours, as affordable housing is thought to be a human right.

A policy brief titled, ‘The Impact of Anti-Competitive Practices in the Construction Industry on Housing for the Poor in Urban Sri Lanka’, by Advocata Institute was presented by Dr. Roshan Perera. Anti-competitive trade practices in three key input markets in construction were identified and their implications on housing affordability. The markets identified were cement, tile and aluminium.

After this presentation the first panel, moderated by Dr. Roshan Perara, consisted of Prof. Premachandra Athukorala, Athula Amarasekera, and Eng. Thilak Premalal. The panel reiterated the nature of anti-competitive trade practices and its impact on the construction industry in Sri Lanka, particularly in the cement, tiles and aluminium market. It also looked into the issue of housing affordability, and how it is affected by these anti-competitive trade practices.

Amarasekra said. “There is an assumption that trade policy can be substituted for competition policy. Trade policy won’t be effective unless there is a strong institutional mechanism to implement competition policy.”

The subsequent panel consisting of Anu Anna Jo, Omar Raad Chowdhury, Dr. Malathy Knight, Dr. Joseph Wilson, moderated by Advocata Research Consultant Rehana Thowfeek, discussed the existence of anti-competitive practices in the housing industry across the region. They also spoke about their respective competition authorities and how they operate and their shortcomings as well as ways in which these shortcomings can be overcome. The importance of trade policy issues and regulatory failures that affect the construction industry and housing in their own countries was also explored. Here policy briefs from regional partners of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan were also presented.

Rehana Thowfeek concluded the session by quoting George Reisman - “The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather it is a competition in the positive, creation of new and additional wealth.”