February, 2005
This is a unique project of ‘trilateral development cooperation’, where Indian expertise will be used to assist lesser developed countries in Africa with the support of two European donors.
The project (7Up3) will be launched at a conference in Kampala, Uganda on 22 March, where international experts and the country research partners will meet to discuss the agenda and formalize the process. The 2-year project will conclude end 2006.
Valued at US$977,760 the project will be implemented in two phases: first, a research phase which will look at the competition scenario in each of the seven countries and come out with reports for wider public consumption, and lobbying the local governments to enact/implement/strengthen their competition laws. The second phase, will involve training and advocacy with the same partners.
CUTS Centre for Competition, Investment and Economic Regulation, Jaipur has been engaged in doing studies on competition policy issues in several developing countries of Africa and Asia. The first one (7Up1), a path breaking study, was done in 2000-2002 in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. The second (7Up2) is being currently implemented in Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. For more please see: www.cuts-international.org/ccier.htm.
Recently, CUTS has released another path-breaking report: “Towards a Functional Competition Policy for India”, which has analysed the competition policy scenario in India. It is available through