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Office for Fair Trading (Malta) brings together the official and independent authorities responsible for the enforcement of the national and European Union legislation on trade competition as well as on consumer protection in Malta. As such, its scope is wider than the nearly homonymous official bodies like the Office of Fair Trading of the United Kingdom and of the states of Australia, which are almost exclusively focused on competition matters, a task undertaken more specifically in Malta by units within the frame of the Office through the Consumer and Competition Division; the Office for Fair Competition and the Commission for Fair Trading. Its director, the Director for Fair Competition, has wide investigatory powers facilitating the collection of evidence. The premises of the Maltese Office for Fair Trading are based in Santa Venera.
The Office's Consumer and Competition Division is one of the entities that emerged from the remit of the former Ministry for Competitiveness and Communications following an operations review carried out in 2000.[1]