Marco institucional y facultades sancionatorias del Servicio Nacional del Consumidor en Chile

Abstract

This paper reviews the actual institutional design of the Chilean consumer protection policy regarding the sanctioning powers of the Chilean Consumer Protection Agency (National Consumer Service, ‘Sernac’, by the Spanish acronym). This paper concludes that there is no consensus in Chile on the importance and necessity of strengthen the powers of this agency as supervisor. Accordingly, we provide six recommendations to solve this problem: to review the role of the consumer protection act, which currently applies only to consumer issues not explicitly covered by other acts, create a specialized court to solve complex claims on this regard but allowing Sernac to settle certain claims, strengthen consumer organizations in Chile, require firms to maintain a public register of claims against them, consider additional restrictions to executives of this regulatory agency after leaving office, and improve procedures in market studies carried out by Sernac. Based upon the new consumer act proposed by the President in June 2014, we conclude that this proposal advance more than any previous one in solving the institutional weakness detected on this paper, but it also have some elements that go further than the optimal level putting into risk the efficient development of our market economy.