공정거래법상 입찰담합규제 활성화 방안에 관한 고찰 -건설시장을 중심으로-

Abstract

As the new government launches, the role of the Korean Fair Trade Commission(herein after ‘KFTC’) as the regulatory agency on large conglomerates is forecasted to be rapidly diminished. Inherent function of the KFTC as the competition authority on the other hand is expected to be getting more emphasized. In this transforming circumstances, the regulations on cartel, especially on ‘bid-rigging’ seems to be one of core area on which the KFTC would concentrate its enforcement capacity. Bid-rigging is the representative sort of naked cartel under the competition law, but, as for the KFTC, regulating it has been a very difficult work to catch and eradicate. Particularly in the korean construction market, so it is, in that bid-riggings have been arising from various complicated reasons. First of all, construction companies protest that the korean market faces oversupply due to recent deregulation on the market, so bid-rigging should be understood as a inevitable response in order to survive. Another important cause is current construction policies and systems which are inclined to induce the anticompetitive agreement around bidders. Especially regarding the latter aspect, unilateral legislative or practical improvement of the current construction institutions for the purpose of removing the cartel inducing factors is not only uneasy to propel but also indesirable considering complex regulatory factors such as safety and quality of construction. In this context, this article attempted to some institutional suggestion to activate the regulation on bid-rigging mainly with the antitrust angle. For that purpose, it made on analysis of anticompetitive practices and environments in the korean construction market, and reviewed legitimacy and limitation of the current legal system. Upon this basis of examination on the recent regulatory reformation against bid-rigging in U.S. and Japan, it suggested overall directions and several concrete ideas for early perception and effective restraints of bid-rigging.