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.

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.