Breaking news: A senior source at the COMESA Competition Commission (“CCC”), has confirmed that the CCC is currently finalising proposed amendments to the Regulations.

The amendments being debated seek to change, crucially, the applicable thresholds for merger notifications to the CCC and to clarify the definition and (potentially lower?) amount of the administrative notification fees.

For the amendments to come into force, they require approval from the COMESA Council of Ministers.  The Council convenes once a year, now likely in February.  The source adds that, as the amendments will only be finalised toward the end of February, an extraordinary session of the Council of Ministers will likely need to be convened to consider the amendments to the Regulations.  Such an extraordinary session may take place in April 2014.  The amended Regulations will only become enforceable upon approval by the Council.

That is, the way things are looking today, any change to the COMESA merger rules will occur in half a year at the earliest…

In practical terms, this means that the dual dilemma of the “zero-threshold contagion” and the inordinately high filing fees currently affecting the CCC’s merger-control regime (and resulting in rather low merger-notification statistics of less than one per month) will continue to hamper the young agency and its customers for the foreseeable near-term future.

We will report back once we have additional details on the precise language of the proposed amendments.