THE LEGAL GROUND OF PRICE REGULATION IN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Price affects the society, the market’s supply and demand equilibrium, choice of traders, over all activity of trade and economy of the country. Because of its wide effect, some suggested restrictions to direct the economy in certain desired direction and some others oppose it by mentioning its negative consequences. However, there has not been agreement as to whether the negative effects weigh the positive impact. So, even though price regulation has negative and positive consequences, many countries including Ethiopia follow the policy in order to achieve a certain objective. And this government intervention in price regulation needs legal bases to manage its consequences. The aim of this research paper was to assess the legal base of price regulation in Ethiopia legal system. To conduct this study, the researcher used a doctrinal and qualitative research method to explain the legal ground of price control in Ethiopia. Primarily data like relevant international and national laws that deal with the issue of price regulation in Ethiopia collected, analyzed, interpreted and examined. Moreover, as secondary source of data statutory materials, regulated goods and services practical cases or case reports, relevant literatures related with the subject matter both from foreign and domestic sources like books, journals, unpublished materials and others collected from library and internet sources and analyzed alongside major conceptual, legal and practical framework of price regulation in Ethiopia. In addition, an effort has been made to collect other primary data. Under the primary sources in-depth interviews with people from different categories (academicians, government officials, consumers and traders) who have knowledge and information about an issue have been conducted. In addition questioners have been conducted by randomly selecting 50(fifty) people from the public. Based on the research finding, there are some gaps, when the practices evaluated by the law like lack of standard and regulating price without considering the interest of the stake holders in the business. For the above problems to exist there are different underlying factors. Among those factors lack of legal framework which stipulate the standard and lack of institutional frame work that establish the system to be effective. Based on this, the researcher recommends that to overcome the mentioned problems, the government should issue a legislation which set a standard for appropriate function of price regulation policy