8 - Implementing Competition Laws across South Asia

Summary

Since 2002 besides India and Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Maldives have also enacted modern competition legislations while Bhutan has adopted a competition policy and Afghanistan has prepared a draft which is yet to be enacted. This chapter examines the state of competition enforcement in these remaining South Asian countries and explores how the adoption processes through which each of these countries have adopted their competition legislation has impacted their enforcement efforts. In the case of countries that are still to adopt competition laws, the chapter predicts their implementation prospects. The chapter also explores how countries that have not made progress towards implementation, may learn from the Indian and Pakistani experience, and ends with discussing the patterns of diffusion and transfer and implementation of competition legislation throughout the region. The chapter identifies a hiatus stage in the adoption–implementation continuum, and argues that countries whose legislations allow for independent competition authorities and have actually established these may be better poised to utilise this hiatus stage to promote a competition culture and facilitate future enforcement than those that embed enforcement entirely within the government.