In a bid to encourage healthier competition in its territory, the ACT government has recently released land for five supermarkets in a move that adheres to its Supermarket Competition Policy Implementation Plan recommended last year by former ACCC commissioner John Martin.

At present, ACT's grocery market is being dominated by Coles and Woolworths with more than 70 percent share grip of the territory's retail industry, which the government had announced they intend to break last year.

Coles and Woolworths have been barred from putting up a new supermarket in Amaroo while more lands were released by the ACT government in Kingston and Casey for the Superbarn and ALDI supermarkets.

Coles, however, will be allowed to bid for a location in Dickson where it is planning to establish a second store besides the existing Woolworths.

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope revealed that Superbarn had pledged to operate a distribution centre in Canberra Airport and he said that the government is doing its best "to offer Canberra families more choices and potentially cheaper prices."

Mr Stanhope said that the government are currently encouraging new players in the retail industry to expand further and maybe emerge as eventual major competitors to the already established retailers in the territory.

However, he assured that Coles and Woolworths could still avail opportunities for expansion, as he stressed "that they have recently approved sales of land to enable Woolworths to expand in centres such as Charnwood."

Mr Stanhope also pointed to the fact that Woolworths has recently secured a new site in Bonner where the retail giant is planning to build another supermarket.

But the opposition is viewing the government's move in another way as opposition leader Zed Seselja declared that the ACT authorities are actually suppressing retail competition.

He conceded that independent players have an important role to play in a healthy market but what "we want to see is as much competition as possible and we don't want to simply turn it from having two major players to having three major players."