Dr. Luis Humberto Guzmán, President of the Nicaragua National Institute for the Promotion of Competition (Procompetencia) has requested UNCTAD to undertake a peer review of Nicaragua's competition policy and law number 601 of 2008.
Procompetencia is a founding member of the 12-member-country COMPAL which is a technical assistance programme for strengthening capacities and institutions in the areas of competition and consumer protection laws and policies in Latin America supported by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) of Switzerland.
COMPAL stands for "Competition and Consumer Protection for Latin America" (Competencia y Protección al consumidor para América Latina). The executing agency of this programme is the UNCTAD Trade Division's Competition and Consumer Policies Branch headed by Mr. Hassan Qaqaya.
Under the COMPAL project, UNCTAD assisted the Nicaraguan Ministry of Productivity and Industry to prepare the competition law, establish the competition agency and develop institutional capacity to enforce the law.
 Dr. Luis Humberto Guzmán |
The peer review of Nicaragua will complete the current UNCTAD cycle of capacity building for countries wishing to introduce competition law. The peer review will be funded from the UN Development Account, and the peer review report will be presented at the UNCTAD Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Competition Policy (IGE) in July 2013.
Nicaragua is the second COMPAL country to undertake a peer review (the other was Costa Rica). Capacity building activities for the follow up on the recommendations of the peer review will be funded under the COMPAL project and will include activities to strengthen regional cooperation among Central American countries.
The Nicaragua peer review report to be completed by January 2013 will be conducted by Ms. Pamela Sittenfeld, former Executive Director of Costa Rica's Commission to Promote Competition (Coprocom), and Mr. Gustavo Valbuena Quinones, former head of the Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (SIC) of Colombia.
