Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs inaugurated the Regional Office (West) of Competition Commission of India (CCI) in a virtual event on 6 October 2022. Shri. Rao Inderjit Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Statistics & Programme Implementation; Planning and Minister of State, Ministry of Corporate Affairs also graced the occasion with his presence.

The Regional Office (West) in Mumbai is the third regional office opened by CCI, after Regional Office (South) in Chennai (inaugurated in February 2021) and Regional Office (East) in Kolkata (inaugurated in April 2022).

In her address, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, congratulated CCI for opening regional office in Mumbai and remarked that easy access of CCI to businesses is important for facilitating ease of doing business. She also complimented CCI for publishing its advocacy booklets in various regional languages and added that such steps empower people in having better access to the regulator. On rapidly evolving digital markets, Smt. Sitharaman stressed on the need to address the competition issues arising out of them, by benchmarking against best practices at the global level. She said that a proactive CCI brings in confidence in the minds of people who want to access it for relief and will help people well prior to issues going out of hand.

On this occasion, Finance Minister also released a pictorial e-publication titled “Competition Commission of India - A Journey Through the Years, 2009 – 2022”, which documents the formative years of CCI and takes stock of the various measures, events and actions that have helped shape this journey. She also released CCI’s competition advocacy booklets translated in Urdu and Punjabi languages. These Booklets, contain information on topics such as - How to File information with CCI, Cartels, Bid Rigging, Abuse of Dominance, Combinations, Leniency etc. Apart from Urdu and Punjabi languages, these booklets have also been earlier translated into 11 other languages i.e. Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Assamese, Gujarati, and Odia, Hindi and English.

During the event, Shri Ashok Kumar Gupta, Chairperson CCI remarked that in a country as vast and diverse as India, setting up regional offices has been a key step towards competition enforcement. He highlighted that CCI’s presence at the financial hub of the country will provide ease of accessibility to numerous stakeholders, augment advocacy outreach in this region, and fulfil a longstanding demand of stakeholders.

The event concluded with a vote of thanks, delivered by Smt. Jyoti Jindgar Bhanot, Secretary (I/c), CCI.

Competition enforcement expansion: new western regional office enhances regulator accessibility and competition advocacy across diverse stakeholders. Opening a western regional office of the Competition Commission of India establishes CCI presence in the financial hub to enhance competition enforcement and regulatory accessibility, strengthen advocacy outreach, and enable early intervention in competition concerns including those in digital markets. The inauguration coincided with release of a pictorial e publication on CCI's journey and newly translated advocacy booklets in Urdu and Punjabi covering filing procedures, cartels, bid rigging, abuse of dominance, combinations and leniency to broaden stakeholder awareness across languages.