As BDLive’s Amanda Visser reports online, the COMESA Competition Commission (“CCC”) has come under fire for inflating its deal-notification filing fees.

The Cipla / Cipla Medpro SA deal is reported in the article to have come in at 0.5% of turnover and cost the merging firms R4.5m in filing fees.

The online journal also notes that appeals to COMESA’s appellate body in Sudan (the COMESA Court of Justice) are unlikely in the case of high filing fees.  Notably, the CCC is prepared to listen to its stakeholders, says Willard Mwemba, head of mergers at the CCC: “The commission has heard the concerns and is engaging a consultant to come up with reduced notification fees.”