The architecture and design of competition authority in Bangladesh: goals, institutional design, adjudicatory process, and method for scrutiny

Abstract

The objectives a legislation seeks to achieve are intricately woven into the fabric of its application and modus operandi of implementation. Now, how can the law be correctly applied, and the authority be rightly operated without fully understanding the purpose behind its enactment, and the institutional design prescribed by the law? This question is particularly pertinent in the case of Bangladesh’s competition law, where the statutory text remains largely ambivalent, offering limited guidance on its application and implementation. Despite this, it is striking that no academic inquiry to date has thoroughly examined the constitutional foundations, the legislative history, parliamentary committee reports, or the speeches delivered by parliamentarians during the law’s formulation. This is the first of its kind study on the architecture and design of the competition law in Bangladesh by analysing hard-to-access archival documents such as parliamentary debates on the enactment of the Competition Act 2012. It demonstrates that the architecture of the law and design of the competition authority Bangladesh Competition Commission does not corroborate, leading to non-fulfillment of the goals of the law, and lax enforcement or implementation of the law even after a decade.