20 years after Singapore: Need for an enhanced 21st century approach to international competition policy

Competition policy and analysis are essential to ensure that international trade and global value chains operate in ways that are inclusive and open for all competitive suppliers. However, while various trade agendas have been successfully pursued on both multilateral and regional levels, sustained efforts to implement enforceable international frameworks for competition policy have foundered.

In this session, E15 Competition Policy experts explored the role of the WTO in the competition policy space, especially after the removal of the Singapore issues from the Doha Development Agenda. Speakers also examined how the currently fragmented international competition policy regime can better support the global trade and antitrust agendas in the delivery of sustainable and inclusive growth.

Building on ICTSD’s twenty-year history of encouraging innovative thinking on trade and sustainable development issues at WTO Ministerial Conferences, 2015’s Trade and Development Symposium (TDS) acted as a crucial platform for intellectual enquiry and dialogue on the future of the multilateral trading system. The E15Initiative stream at the Trade and Development Symposium focused on dialogue around the key deliverables the Initiative’s world class experts released in January 2016 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Discussions provided an exclusive preview of the policy options that have been developed over four years by some of the world’s most pre-eminent trade policy experts.