INDIA has been unanimously elected as Vice President at the UNCTAD Conference held at Geneva at the Sixth UN Conference to review Multilaterally Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices.

The United Nations ‘Set’ of Principles and Rules on Competition is the only multilateral instrument on competition policy. It provides a set of equitable rules for the control of anti-competitive practices, recognises the development dimension of competition law and policy, provides a framework for international cooperation and exchange of best practices in this area, including the provision of technical assistance and capacity building for member countries.

The UN General Assembly had unanimously adopted the ‘Set of Multilaterally Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices’ in December 1980. Since then, these are reviewed once every five years, at such Conferences, and this was the sixth such Conference, also marking 30 years of the adoption of these Principles. The special focus of discussion this time was ‘the role of competition policy in promoting economic development, in these troubled times’.