3 - The Spread of Competition Laws across South Asia

Summary

South Asian countries, i.e., Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, are not only at similar stages of economic development and have comparable relationships with multi-lateral agencies, but are also connected to each other through their geographies as well as parallel and sometimes overlapping histories. Among them, besides India and Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and more recently Maldives have also enacted competition legislation, while Bhutan has a competition policy, and Afghanistan a draft competition legislation which is yet to be enacted. This chapter outlines the pre-conditions of transfer in each of these countries and charts the progress of their competition regimes along the deliberation–enactment–implementation continuum. In doing so, the chapter analyses the motivations, mechanisms, and institutions engaged by each of these countries and evaluates the compatibility and legitimacy generated, or where the adoption has not been completed, likely to be generated, in the course of adoption.