Chair, Sherille Ismail: I’m with the FCC and here but here in a personal capacity, not representing the FCC. I’d like to start by quoting Adam Smith, who made the argument that there’s an invisible hand that rules markets.I don’t believe that’s true of the world we live in.
It’s not enough to destroy what was before, it’s important to create something to new. Even if you take someone like Margaret Thatcher, a foremost champion of the free market, when she brought forth reforms she actually created 12 regulatory agencies. I want to set the framework for the discussions that follow.
There are three types of transitions that are important when you look at creating markets.
- feudal to capitalist [not sure]
- communist to post-communist
- undeveloped to developed
In the telecom world we have a perfect example. We have had situations where there are incumbents. They have all the infrastructure, all the customers, set the standards and have all the expertise. In order to change that and create competition, you need institutions. I think what’s emerged is two approaches to creating this capacity in emerging economies. One is to bring expertise from other countries. Two is regulation by photocopying.
Markets don’t appear, they need to be created. We need to build skills and competency levels. There needs to be an ongoing involvement in order to keep the markets functioning. That is not as feasible in many of the markets we’re looking at. This panel will look at some ideas to promote competition in a market while waiting for the long term development of capacity building.
Comments are closed.