MANILA – The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) said Monday it raised the threshold amounts for notification of mergers and acquisitions to put it in line with the growing economy.
The threshold size of either firm or entity before the transaction will be increased to P6 billion from P5.6 billion effective Mar. 1. The threshold for the size of transaction will be raised to P2.4 billion from P2.2 billion, the PCC said in a statement.
The PCC said it established an automatic annual adjustment for the mergers and acquisitions thresholds “to ensure that the thresholds maintain their real value over time and relative to the size of the economy.”
Adjustments are based on the nominal gross domestic product growth of the previous year rounded to the nearest hundred million, the PCC said.
“This will allow the Commission to efficiently use its resources towards other equally important elements of competition enforcement, including the conduct of cartel investigations, market monitoring and motu proprio merger review,” PCC chairperson Arsenio Balisacan said.
Parties covered by the mandatory threshold should notify the commission within 30 days from signing deals, the PCC said. The most recent hike is the PCC’s third adjustment since 2015, which started from a threshold of P1 billion.
The PCC said it reviewed 43 notified transactions since the first adjustment (from March 2018 to February 2019) and 30 deals during the second amendment (from March 2019 to present).
The agency has reviewed a total of P3.6 trillion deals with a total of 207 transactions since its inception. (ABS-CBN News)
