Federal Consumer Protection Agency of Nouvelle Alexandrie

Federal Consumer Protection Agency of Nouvelle Alexandrie
Logo of the Agency
Formed	By order under the Cost of Living Relief Act, 1760 (Royal Assent 10.V.1760 AN)
Preceding agency	consumer-protection agency of the Department of Trade and Industry
Type	Independent statutory body
Jurisdiction	Nouvelle Alexandrie
Head of the Agency	Tamara Huanca Moreno
Parent agency	Reports to the Cortes Federales

The Federal Consumer Protection Agency of Nouvelle Alexandrie, established as the Federal Consumer Protection Agency and called the Agency in the statute that created it, is an independent statutory body of Nouvelle Alexandrie. Its purpose is to protect consumers and to lower prices through competition and fair pricing: it is to review the concentrated markets in which prices are high and the ease with which a household may change supplier, to enforce the display of whole and unit prices, to guard against unconscionable pricing in a shortage or an emergency, and to administer a national framework for the pricing of medicines. The Agency is independent of the Government and reports each year to the Cortes Federales, receiving the complaints of consumers and laying an annual report before the chambers.

Article 13 of the Cost of Living Relief Act, 1760 established the Agency, the third of the economic bills of the Government of the Federal Accord, which received the Royal Assent on 10.V.1760 AN. The establishment takes effect by order, which the Act requires to be made not later than one year after the assent. The Government began to stand the Agency up on 18.VI.1760 AN and opened the search for its head. The Speaker of the Federal Assembly appointed Tamara Huanca Moreno head of the Agency on 15.XI.1760 AN, on the recommendation of the Budget and Finances Committee.

Establishment

The Cost of Living Relief Act, 1760 created the Agency, reconstituting a consumer-protection function of the Department of Trade and Industry as an independent statutory body and setting it over the fair-pricing and competition measures the Act introduced.

Predecessor

The Agency succeeds to the consumer-protection agency named within the Department of Trade and Industry, a departmental body that had carried the consumer-protection name but had not been given an independent standing of its own. The Act gives that function an independent statutory form and a defined set of duties, following the pattern by which the 1760 budget reconstituted the Federal Budget Office as the Federal Budget and Costing Office.

Origins in the Federal Accord

The Agency belongs to the cost-of-living settlement of the Cost of Living Relief Act, 1760, one of the economic bills of the opening legislative program that the coalition of the Alliance for a Just Nouvelle Alexandrie, the Civic Governance Alliance, and the Federal Consensus Party brought before the 14th Cortes Federales under Premier Marcos Ferreira Gonçalves and the coalition agreement that founded the Government. The Act also cut the rate of value added tax on essential goods and provided direct payments toward the cost of living. It was tabled by the Secretary of Social Security and National Solidarity, Ana Yuisa Caguax, and co-sponsored by the Treasury Secretary Tomás Iñiguez and the Trade and Industry Secretary Jacqueline Betancourt.

Standing up

The Government began to establish the Agency on 18.VI.1760 AN, naming the day on which its establishment is to take effect and opening the search for the head who would lead it. The Secretary of Trade and Industry, Jacqueline Betancourt, said the Government would not use the whole of the year the Act allowed, telling reporters, "We are not going to leave it a year in a drawer." The measure was opposed by the Leader of the Opposition, José Manuel Montero, who argued that the country had not been shown it needed the new body.

Functions

The Agency's duties come from the Cost of Living Relief Act, which sets them across the review of competition, the transparency of prices, the pricing of essential goods in an emergency, and the pricing of medicines. In each of these the Agency receives the complaints of consumers and reports every year to the Cortes.

Competition and switching

The concentrated markets in which prices to consumers are high are the Agency's to review, and it is to report to the Cortes on the state of competition in them and on the remedies that would lower prices, including those within the powers of the Federation and those it recommends to the Regions. In the markets for household energy, for banking, and for electronic communications, the Agency is to secure that a consumer may change supplier simply and without penalty, and to provide or approve a public means by which a consumer may compare the prices and terms of suppliers. Each report of the Agency the Secretary of Trade and Industry must answer, stating the action the Government will take upon it.

Price transparency

The price advertised or offered to a consumer must be the whole price payable, including every mandatory fee and charge, and a fee that a consumer cannot reasonably avoid may not be added after the price is first shown. Under the Act the Agency makes and enforces the rules for the display of whole prices, together with the requirement that prices be shown by unit so that a consumer may compare like goods.

Unconscionable pricing of essentials

Where the Government has declared a shortage or an emergency in an essential good, a person may not charge a price for that good that is grossly excessive in the circumstances, and the Act charges the Agency with enforcing that prohibition. The Act preserves the economic freedom guaranteed by Article 22 of the Proclamation of Punta Santiago and does not empower the setting of prices in the ordinary course of trade.

Pharmaceutical pricing

The Act also gives the Agency a national framework for the pricing of medicines to administer, building on the National Drug Pricing Scheme; under it the Agency may, with the Department and the health authorities, negotiate the prices of medicines and publish reference prices. The framework provides for a reference price for therapeutically equivalent medicines, for the central tender and joint purchase of medicines for the public health programs, and for the substitution of an equivalent lower-cost medicine unless a prescriber directs otherwise on medical grounds.

Governance and independence

The head of the Agency is appointed by the Speaker of the Federal Assembly on the recommendation of the Budget and Finances Committee, holds office for a fixed term of six years, and may be removed only by a two-thirds vote of the Federal Assembly for cause. The Agency reports to the Cortes and is independent of the Government.

These guarantees of independence are the same the 1760 budget gave the Federal Budget and Costing Office, the fiscal body established on the same arm's-length pattern of appointment through the Speaker and the Budget and Finances Committee. Although the Agency is independent and reports to the Cortes rather than to a department, it is associated with the Department of Trade and Industry, working alongside the Department's Antitrust and Market Competitiveness Bureau, and the Secretary of Trade and Industry lays each report of the Agency before the Cortes.

The Agency is funded within the departmental appropriations of the budget and not by new borrowing.

See also

• Cost of Living Relief Act, 1760
• Department of Trade and Industry (Nouvelle Alexandrie)
• Federal Budget and Costing Office
• Federal Debt Review Board
• National Economic Council of Nouvelle Alexandrie
• Cortes Federales of Nouvelle Alexandrie
• Healthcare in Nouvelle Alexandrie