State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Indonesian competition law and practice

One of the main objectives of competition law is to provide the same level playing field among competing companies in a particular market. The regulation of business competition is intended to create fair competition among business actors while avoiding unfair competition or anti-competitive practices that may damage the business climate. For this purpose, competition law contains provisions on what should and should not be done in the context of business competition. Since competition law is intended to create fair competition, anyone competing for business in a particular market must be subject to the provisions of competition law. In the competition law discourse, one of the controversial issues is the position of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). There are basically two main views regarding the status of SOEs in the competition law. First, SOEs should be granted privileges, even excluded from the scope of business competition law. Secondly, since SOEs are basically businesses and competitors to private enterprises, SOEs must also be subject to competition law. This paper examines the status of SOEs in Indonesian competition law, both in the context of the normative framework and in the implementation of competition law provisions. For this purpose, this paper will examine the rules of competition law governing the SOEs and analyze some cases of alleged violations of competition law examined by the KPPU as the Indonesian competition authority.