When the free market flows to the country, many business sectors appear to make their business run strongly among the other businesses. The problems also appear due to the number of enterprises and consumers in the market. To achieve and reach the top peak in the market, the companies try to build their system and compete with the other market. However, to win and beat other companies, they act unfair trade practices. When unfair trade practices happen in the market, the consumers and also the business sectors will receive damages. To stop the companies to do so, the country must have a strong legal aspect and strong policies to prevent those activities happen in the market. The first significance is the business sectors have the fair trade practice to run business in the market independently and competitively. If one company takes control over the market or has the power to limit the output or the number of products and set the fixed price with a higher price of the product or service, they are the serious issues that the government has to take action and prevent the unfair practice. As a result, a state must have a powerful law to apply and punish illegal actions. Besides, the interest of consumers is also an issue to be concerned about. When the business act illegally in the market, the victim is the consumer. Their interest, living, health, and environment will be affected. Therefore, the consumer should be protected and are given more rights to be able to against the unlawful acts because of the unfair business.
To prevent those activities, WTO and ASEAN require all members to follow the policies and adopt the important laws to deal with the issues. The laws that shall be adopted in each member state are Competition Law and Law on Consumer Protection. Most all countries already completed the requirement. If looking at the ASEAN member states, most of all countries completed however, one country that has not achieved yet is Cambodia. Cambodia is now putting more effort to speed up the process of adoption of both laws. From the latest news, Competition Law is now still drafting while the Law on Consumer Protection is already adopted and came into force in 2019.
When Cambodia is the last country to complete the requirement of WTO and ASEAN, and both laws are very new for Cambodia, Cambodia shall learn the laws and processes from the other countries as an example. Therefore, this dissertation will study both laws to prevent the unfair practices that can happen in Cambodia. Moreover, this dissertation will also learn the laws from Thailand and Malaysia as well because Cambodia can learn the lesson from both laws as examples.