UNCTAD is the focal point on all work related to competition policy and consumer welfare within the United Nations system.
This mandate is established by The Set of Multilaterally Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices (also known as the United Nations Set of Principles and Rules on Competition), unanimously adopted by the General Assembly in 1980.
It has as a main objective “to ensure that restrictive business practices do not impede or negate the realization of benefits that should arise from liberalization of tariff and non-tariff barriers affecting world trade, particularly those affecting the trade and development of developing countries”.
The Set establishes broad principles and rules encouraging the adoption and strengthening of competition legislation and policies at the national and regional levels, and at promoting international cooperation in this area.
Despite the general trend towards the adoption, reformulation or better implementation of competition laws and policies in developing countries and economies in transition, many of these countries still need to improve their competition legislation or strengthen their institutions for effective enforcement, and therefore rely, to a large extent, on UNCTAD capacity building for this work.
This Handbook was prepared by the Secretariat taking into account that commentaries contributed by States together with texts of their national competition legislation could be used by countries for preparation and/or further revision and updating of national competition legislation, in particular as complementary material to the UNCTAD Model Law on Competition. Moreover, this Handbook together with the Model Law could be used in the provision of UNCTAD’s technical assistance activities to countries introducing or revising their legislation.
The Handbook contains commentaries on competition legislation provided by States and published by the Secretariat in 2013-2014, as well as commentaries not included or provided after the publication of the previous, First edition of the Handbook.
The UNCTAD Secretariat is grateful to the States that contributed to this issue of the Handbook, and encourages Member States to provide the Secretariat with their commentaries on recent developments in national competition legislation and jurisprudence, as well as their revised competition laws.
