Pie in the sky

So, after a decade and a half of delay and a great deal of nonsensical argument about why the entrenched privileges of Hong Kong's monopolists need to be preserved, the government has finally decided to bring forward competition legislation. Anyone daft enough to think that this will break up the monopolies which hold local consumers to ransom should quickly swallow a reality pill - preferably a strong one.

Successful lobbying by the people who have the most to lose from an effective competition law has ensured that tough measures to break up cartels will be lacking and that the elementary measure of simply banning monopolies will find no place in this legislation.

There is also considerable doubt over whether the new regulator will even be given sufficient powers to act effectively in its own right.

Moreover, government bodies that compete with the private sector will be exempt and, as night follows day, there will also be a mass of other exemptions ensuring that the kind of anti-cartel legislation that has proved effective in other jurisdictions will not prevail here.

This is not some arcane law which can be blithely ignored by the average person, because Hong Kong's exquisite network of monopolies impacts on daily life in many ways. For example, the supermarket duopoly means that we have some of the world's most expensive food stores.

And the big developers' iron grip on the property market - aided and abetted by the government's land sale policies which all but shut out smaller developers - leads not only to higher prices but a degree of arrogance that turns the property renting and buying public into victims as opposed to customers.

My company is in the process of opening a restaurant in Kowloon Bay, a fast-developing office area dominated, as ever, by the usual gaggle of property oligarchs.