The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) and the National Privacy Commission (NPC) have agreed to collaborate on policy initiatives that will harness synergies between competition and data privacy.
In a statement on Thursday, March 27, PCC said it convened on March 19 to tackle the findings of a PCC market study published in 2024, which examined competition concerns arising from the market power of the so-called Big Tech companies, specifically Meta’s Facebook and Google, in the context of the potential challenges posed by cross-border data flows of these platforms.
A PCC official who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of privacy issues, said the strategic policy dialogue was meant to engage the NPC, the data privacy watchdog, to identify policy reforms in its sector, aligned with the Philippine Competition Act (PCA).
Another official said the two agencies have an existing memorandum of agreement, which calls for stronger cooperation on the protection of consumers and data subjects.
In an executive summary, the study found the digital platform ecosystem in the Philippines to be highly concentrated, with a limited number of firms, such as Facebook and Google, emerging as dominant entities in the social media and search markets, respectively.
“This concentration allows these companies to collect and process vast amounts of user data, thereby raising significant data privacy concerns,” the study added.
Key concerns identified during the dialogue include the lack of consumer choice in data collection, as major platforms impose privacy policies that leave consumers with little bargaining power over their personal data, PCC said in the statement.
The study, as posted on the PCC website, examined how digital platforms could use data collection, network effects, and economies of scale to strengthen their dominance, potentially limiting consumer choice and stifling competition.
The study further looked into how data collection has enabled these platforms to consolidate data and maintain their market power within the context of Philippine digital markets and laws.
One of the recommendations of the study is to include data privacy considerations in the PCA and to further research on data portability and interoperability mechanisms.
Data portability allows users to transfer their data between platforms while data interoperability is the seamless exchange of data across systems in promoting competition.
“While these functionalities are generally considered to be pro-competitive, they can be exploited by dominant platforms to further entrench their market power, ultimately to the detriment of platform users. The presence of digital platforms operating across multiple jurisdictions heightens concerns regarding cross-border data transfers,” the study said.
PCC said that during the dialogue, Franklin Anthony Tabaquin IV, director at the NPC’s Privacy Policy Office, shared insights on the progress and challenges of enforcing data privacy laws for dominant digital platforms.
No details were divulged but the PCC said the agencies committed to forge stronger cooperation with the regulatory bodies such as NPC.
