Extensive UNCTAD report highlights state of Namibian competition enforcement, comes at right time when Namibia ponders inclusion of “unfairness” standard in merger control

A.S.

Following the release of the final UNCTAD report (entitled “Voluntary Peer Review of Competition Law and Policy: Namibia“), the report’s sponsors organised a gathering of interested parties in mid-February in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, for a “dissemination event” of the report.

The event included a session on “various elements of knowledge management systems,” for which the the South African Competition Commission was selected to serve as an exemplary agency.  The Namibia Competition Commission presented a plan for implementing the Report’s recommendations.  This plan will form part of the agency’s overall strategic planning framework “Smart enforcement, smart advocacy and smart research” that is to be launched by June 2015.

In attendace was, among others, the country’s Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Tjekero Tweya.  Participants were invited to attend two round tables discussions on the intersection and complementarities of competition policy and consumer protection; and strengthening cooperation between different government bodies to improve competition enforcement in Namibia.

Substantively, AAT welcomes further and deeper discussion of true antitrust/competition law issues in Namibia wholeheartedly.  We reported last year that a crucial revision of the Namibian competition law includes consumer-protection provisions that would potentially bar M&A deals not only on pure antitrust grounds but also on a more broadly defined “unfairness” basis.

The cited Report contains two relevant statistics, showing the relatively young enforcement agency’s workload in absolute terms as well as in relative (merger vs. other enforcement work) numbers: