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Mr Roger Nellist, Mr Pradeep Mehta and Dr Stephen McGurk

Dr Stephen McGurk, Mr Pradeep Mehta, and Mr Roger Nellist launch Competition and Development: The Power of Competitive Markets, an IDRC publication.

On August 14, 2008, Stephen McGurk, IDRC's Regional Director for South Asia and China, Roger Nellist, DFID, and Pradeep S Mehta of CUTS, launched Competition and Development: The Power of Competitive Markets by Susan Joekes and Phil Evans at a seminar in Delhi. The book is part of the IDRC in_focus collection.

This volume demonstrates the importance of true and fair competition to sustainable development and an effective marketplace, touching on issues of globalization, consumer welfare, cartels and monopolies, and trade liberalization. It provides an introduction to competition and competition law and policy in developing countries. It focuses on the practical problems faced in developing countries and the steps that have been and can be taken to overcome those problems. It is about anticompetitive practices as they occur in developing countries and the policies that governments and citizens can promote and practice to limit the impact of such practices.

At the launch at the India International Centre in New Delhi, a number of distinguished scholars of trade and competition and competition policy specialists and practitioners were present, including Shyam Khemani, Phillip Brusick, Roger Nellist, Simon Evenett, Jyoti Sagar, S. Chakravarthy, S.L. Rao, and Pradeep Mehta. They joined Amitabh Kumar, Director General of India’s Competition Commission, and a host of international civil society activists to speak about the need for competition policy and laws and the power of alliance-building between competition authorities and domestic research communities, government departments and sectoral regulators, media and civil society and international groups.

In their remarks, Stephen McGurk, Roger Nellist, and Pradeep Mehta stressed the timeliness and utility of this volume and its accessibility to consumer groups and civil society, as well as to government officials, legislators, trade negotiators, and the judiciary.

For more analysis, discussion, and case material, visit the website, www.idrc.ca/in_focus_competition. A CD, included with the book, contains much of the website materials.

2008-09-03

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