ONLY three companies account for nearly 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s cooking oil production, resulting in high price-setting despite a significant decline in input costs, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa Competition Commission has noted.
The situation has created an oligopoly in the industry, which is a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers.
In its latest report on market concentration and barriers to entry in the vegetable oil sector, the commission said ETG Parrogate, Surface Wilmar and United Refineries dominated the local cooking oil producing sector, a situation that allowed them to dictate prices without significant pressure to lower them.