The Government of Paraguay requested for technical assistance from UNCTAD to benefit from its successful experience with COMPAL, particularly for the process of adoption from competition law.  It should be noted that UNCTAD has been able to grant such technical assistance through the regional component of COMPAL II. However, the specific national component for COMPAL did not exist during the time of this report.  Presently, UNCTAD deploys all of its efforts towards the creation of a national component.

Having established the aforementioned, the work of UNCTAD has been searching for the national consensus on the draft competition bill that exist in discussion in the country.

In November 2009, UNCTAD was invited by the President of Paraguay, His Excellency Fernando Lugo, to conduct an analysis of the priorities and needs in the area of competition policy and consumer protection. The results of this analysis was to identify matching and integrating aspects of the bill of the government with the private sector (Purpose of the Act; Scope; rule of “de minimis” in restrictive agreements; Re-structuring of the chapter on Abuse of dominance, Principles of the Enforcement Authority; structure of Title III of the proceedings; structure of Title V system of penalties and Principles of Management).

Nevertheless, it was identified areas for improvement in the drafting of competition law and had themes like (the fate of the collection of fines)?, assessment of efficiency in the agreements restricting competition; prior notification in merger control, and the Selection process for the members of the enforcement authority. This last theme meant a long process of progress and setbacks between the public and private sector with a series of video conferences made by UNCTAD during the period of 2010 and the first half of 2011.

By June 2011, the delegation of UNCTAD (Brazil, TVDC-Spain, Uruguay) could finally support a technical consensus of the aforementioned themes with the private sector, (coming)? to sign a document of accession of the Public and Private Sector with the purpose of presenting one consolidated project of competition law to Congress. 

At the time of writing this report, MIC is expected to officially introduce the bill to Congress for its final approval.  Additionally, activities have been planned for training with the members of the Commission on Industry and Trade of Congress of the Dominican Republic for the second half of 2011.