For a long time Trade Kings has been a nuisance, scooping ideas from small and vulnerable businesses and passing them as their own and sometimes even bullying small businesses to sale their ideas at scrap value, just to grow the brand to mammoth heights.
By Daimone Siulapwa
Under a free market system, competition is inevitable. In Zambia’s case, unchecked competition, especially from greedy manufacturers and imported of finished goods remains a challenge for Zambia’s SME industry.
Consequently, competition is really not a bad phenomenon as it can spark innovation, productivity, competitiveness, and it largely contributes to an effective business environment. For this reason and more, businesses need to continue to attract consumers with innovative behaviors.
From time immemorial, small businesses have been proved to be an effective bedrock of any economy and it is therefore imperative to consider their survival in the face of the current realities and the impact of anti-competitive conduct of a few selfish corporations. One of the important functions of government is to create an enabling environment in which businesses can operate and compete fairly. It is therefore key for the government to offer protection to SMEs against large companies like Trade Kings.
If there is any business entity in Zambia that has done more damage to Zambia and its many struggling SME businesses, it is Trade Kings. In the recent few years, Trade Kings has been sorely responsible for the close down of many companies, including specifically those in the mineral water and Juice industry.
If the truth was to be told, Trade Kings have forced the closure of MORE businesses in Zambia than COVID 19 did, furthermore they have with impunity broken down all supply chain rules in Zambia without suffering any consequences by the powers that be, what is the mandate of toothless organizations like The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission if they can’t protect local businesses?
Accordingly, we must remind ourselves that The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) is a statutory body under the Ministry of Commerce Trade and Industry, established with a dual mandate to protect the competition process in the Zambian Economy and also to protect consumers.
The CCPC was established in 1997 under the name Zambia Competition Commission (ZCC). The name was then changed in 2010 to Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) following the enactment of the new Act called the Competition and Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) No. 24 of 2010 and repeal of the old Act.
The main mandate of the CCPC is to regulate the Zambian economy to avoid restrictive business practices, abuse of dominant position of market power, anti-competitive mergers and acquisitions and cartels as these erode consumer welfare.
The Commission is also mandated to enhance consumer welfare. In general terms therefore, the principle aim of the Commission is to safeguard competition and ensure consumer protection.
Arguably, it is now very clear to see that the commission has failed in its mandate to protect the vulnerable citizens and SMEs when it comes to Trade Kings. It is rumored that for a long time Trade Kings has been a nuisance, scooping ideas from small and vulnerable businesses and passing them as their own and sometimes even bullying small businesses to sale their ideas at scrap value, just to grow the brand to mammoth heights.
Why would such a large organization be a manufacturer, distributor and retailer? Trade Kings, today, has expanded beyond Zambian borders to explore opportunities in other markets such as South Africa, Burundi, and Zimbabwe. The firm established an export base in Bujumbura, Burundi for exports to the great lakes region (DRC, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya including Burundi).
Trade kings’ unfair business practice was actually the one of the main reason the company was forced to pack its bags and leave Tanzania, they have the tendency to overlook and trample down on the laws that govern unfair competition.
As if that was not enough, Trade kings is now also bidding for public procurement and enjoying the preference and reservation schemes in direct competition with small local suppliers. What happened to our procurement system to allow such an unfair business practice against its own citizens? Who is not doing their work or is there anyone, anywhere receiving kickbacks?
Of late, Trade Kings has coincidently being employing a large workforce of an Indian origin. From my personal experience, observation and investigation, I have found these new Indian employees occupying positions of area sales representative, which can easily be filled by Zambian citizens.
These new staff are also barely able to speak any English, which makes it very difficult to communicate with them and they are literarily not trained for business customer care and they come to the Zambian market with an apartheid mentality and attitude towards our citizens.
In my opinion, chances are that they come to Zambia on visitor’s permit, then their work and resident permits are processed while they are already in Zambia and are working. Heads must roll at the immigration office we want to know what criterion is used to give these people work permits for such simple tasks. That can be performed by a Zambian grade two.
The question that bergs answers are, does the government has the political will to fight this monster company and protects its many citizens from further harm? Or are the citizens expected to fight this battle on their own?
Daimone Siulapwa is a Citizen Empowerment Activist, Analyst and the founder and Editor-In-Chief of the Voice Newspaper in Zambia. Comments – email dsgbarron@matthews
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are entirely those of the writer and not this media house.