UNCTAD provides capacity-building and technical assistance on competition law and policy to developing and least developed countries, as well as countries in transition, in accordance with requests received, the needs of the countries concerned and resources available. This includes both national and regional assistance in drafting competition laws and policy guidelines as well as capacity-building in the implementation of competition policy with a long term perspective in line with the United Nations Set of Multilaterally Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices, and the requests made by the Sixth United Nations Conference to Review All Aspects of the Set.
The objective of this round table discussion is to briefly take stock of the capacity-building and technical cooperation activities of the UNCTAD secretariat since 2010 and submitted to the Intergovernmental Group of Experts (IGEs) during the period 2011-2014. In addition, an assessment of the impact of UNCTAD intervention in the area of competition and consumer policies in the last five-year period will be also discussed.
Member States will be informed of the new global strategy adopted by UNCTAD's Competition and Consumer Policies Branch in 2014 called "GLOBAL COMPAL". This will aim to cover all of UNCTAD's technical assistance and capacity building activities in the forthcoming years.
Indeed, on the basis of the experience gained from the work under COMPAL for Latin America during the last 12 years, the Secretary General of UNCTAD launched the GLOBAL COMPAL in Lima (Peru) on 5 May 2014. This new strategy is meant to cover competition and consumer protection policies for all regions of the world; therefore the new meaning of "COMPAL" is now "Competition and Consumer Protection Policies for All." At present, the GLOBAL COMPAL strategy is being implemented in: the MENA region through the COMPAL MENA Programme; the Latin American region through COMPAL III; and also through the ASEAN region with the launch of COMPAL ASEAN on sectorial consumer protection enforcement issues.
