The Fair Trading Commission (FTC) on Monday presented the annual report for 2020 to Minister of Finance, Naadir Hassan.
FTC was created in 2019 in order to promote efficiency and competitiveness within the business enterprises and services sector and improve standards of service, quality, and availability of goods and services to consumers.
The reports showed there was a slight increase in complaints in 2020 compared to 2019.
In 2020, the FTC received 169 complaints from consumers, 89 of them coming from services, while 80 of them were for goods purchased.
“The most prominent category of complaints came from construction and architectural services, from which 51 complaints were received, while 62 cases were recorded for electronic goods,”
FCT Chief Executive Francis Lebon said when he presented the report.
The total value of service cases amounted to over SCR20 million – about $1.3 million – while that of goods cases was over SCR1.5 million ($120,000).
Lebon said, “We do however have a number of challenges and constraints, which we hope to deal with in the coming years, such as the time it takes for appeal decisions to be made, the lack of manpower, resources and the time it takes for cases to be dealt with.”
He added that FTC is working on a new law expected to be gazetted in September.
“At the moment, it takes quite some time for our cases to be dealt with but with this new law that we hope to have in place next year, it will enable us to give out fixed penalties, which will be much faster,” said Lebon.
He also pointed out that consumers are also helping the commission a lot, through the reporting of cases, where around 70 per cent of inspections came through tip-offs received.