On 16 April 2008, Bolivia adopted a competition law for all sectors. The Superintendency of Enterprises is currently the competition authority dealing with the implementatin the competition law.

The regulation of five specific sectors of economic activity (essential services, electricity, hydrocarbons, transport, and telecommunications) is undertaken by separate superintendencies, overseen by the agency SIRESE (Sistema de Regulación Sectorial). Each Superintendence has multiple legal mandates, of which promoting and protecting competition is one. In particular, the law covering SIRESE contains a single paragraph on competition-related matters, and regulations implementing the latter have yet to be elaborated.

Moreover, even though some of the transportation-related sectors are regulated by SIRESE, the perceived degree of competition is no more intense than in the rest of the economy. The likely obstacles to the promotion of competition are:

• The absence of an economy-wide competition law (which itself reflects a lack of appreciation of the benefits of competition within Bolivian society as a whole);
• Little capacity to enforce the existing competition-related provisions in SIRESE's law.

Previous attempts in 1997, 2000 and 2003 to draft an economy-wide competition law were not successful. This may be due to the costs and bureaucratic implications of adopting such a law and the political conditions in recent years.