Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chairman, Professor Allan Fels, today welcomed the announcement by Coca-Cola Amatil (Aust.) of its Public Compliance Commitment to the ACCC's Pricing Guidelines.
CCA (Aust.) has been involved in discussions with the ACCC for a number of months about this commitment and has provided detailed financial information to the ACCC to support its compliance with the guidelines.
In particular the company has undertaken not to increase its net dollar margins or to increase any individual price by more than 10 per cent as a result of the New Tax System changes alone.
The ACCC regards it as highly significant that PCCs are signed off by a company's Managing Director or CEO, in this case by CCA's Managing Director, Mr Andrew Reeves. This adds to the confidence consumers can have that a company will follow the ACCC's guidelines.
The ACCC has strong powers to ensure adherence to its guidelines. The PCC process, however, provides an opportunity for it to pre-empt problems and for companies to get greater assurance that their pricing responses to the New Tax System changes are in line with the guidelines.
It is expected that many more PCCs will be finalised before the tax changes come into effect.