COMESA Competition Commission‘s head of mergers foreshadows end of zero-threshold regime

Will the Commission soon find a cure to the contagion that has made the agency’s merger control the subject of heavy criticism by antitrust practitioners and and even ridicule by fellow enforcers? Willard Mwemba claims the agency has – after over a year of operating under the zero-threshold rule – “set the wheels in motion for the threshold to be raised.”  The Commission is reportedly working with the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation to determine what the proper notification thresholds should be.

We previously had this to say in November of last year:

[T]he 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.

Depending on how swiftly the agency and its advisors at the IFC get things done – and the amendments actually get approved – it appears that our timing forecast was fairly accurate  (“COMESA merger rules to change in April 2014 at the earliest“).