Chinese distillers fined 449m yuan for price-fixing
Baijiu makers Moutai, Wuliangye first domestic giants to be punished in antimonopoly blitz
The mainland's top liquor makers, Kweichow Moutai and Wuliangye Yibin, have been fined 449 million yuan (HK$558 million) for breaking price monopoly rules, as the government gets tough on anticompetitive practices.
The two firms admitted on their official websites earlier that they had violated antimonopoly laws by charging penalties to distributors who sold their baijiu alcohol products at lower prices than the producers had required.
The National Development and Reform Commission started an investigation last month.
The agency recently handed down the penalty, which was equivalent to about 1 per cent of the companies' combined revenue last year, the official China National Radio said on Tuesday.
Kweichow Moutai and Wuliangye Yibin are the first two leading domestic firms to be subjected to such fines since the antimonopoly laws came into effect five years ago.
An NDRC spokesman said last night he needed to verify the report before commenting on it.
Wei Shilin, the secretary general of the Beijing Lawyers Association's antitrust committee, said: "It's apparent that the government is wielding an iron hand to hit the monopoly practices in the market.