Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Latin American and Caribbean Competition Forum brings together high-level competition officials each year to promote dialogue, consensus building and networking among policy makers and enforcers in the region.
The 2022 Forum was hosted by Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE). Discussion topics included Leniency Agreements, Market Definition in the Oil and Gas Sector and Media mergers.
Competition policy in Latin America and the Caribbean has grown significantly in the past two decades. This report presents some of the main competition enforcement trends in the region based on an analysis of data provided by 14 OECD and non-OECD jurisdictions about their competition enforcement activity from 2015-20. By providing multi-year data on competition enforcement indicators, this report informs policymaking and contributes to the continual improvement of competition law and policy in the region.
Oil and natural gas are major energy sources in the world and play a key role in the global economy including in Latin America and the Caribbean. They represent together around 67% of the world’s total final consumption by energy source, followed by electricity related sources (i.e. hydroelectric, nuclear plants), biofuels, and coal. The figure is similar in Central and South America, where they represent together around 60% of total consumption by energy source. When considered the total supply of energy, they also represent a significant share and reach almost 90% of total energy supply in certain Latin American countries such as Mexico (IEA, 2021).
This session focused mainly on competition enforcement of market definition issues in the downstream segment of the oil and gas industries. Both product and geographic dimensions were addressed as they play an important role in the assessment of market power and consequently the competition analysis in concrete cases. This may include updates in methodologies to improve the definition of relevant markets, the interplay between products that have some degree of substitutability but are usually defined as separate relevant markets, tying and bundling strategies, vertical integration matters, and the general legal requirement to define relevant markets in enforcement cases. The session intended to cover the legal, economic, and practical dimensions of market definition in the gas sector.
Background documentation
Call for contributions • English | Español
OECD Issues Note • English | Español
Speakers
Vinicius Carvalho, Professor, University of São Paulo and former President, CADE, Brazil Bio 
Javier Tapia, Executive-Director, Asociación de Transmisores and former Judge at Competition Tribunal, Chile 
Pablo Trevisan, Lawyer-Partner Trevisán Abogados, and former Commissioner, CNDC, Argentina
Pamela Sittenfeld, Chief of staff, Minister of Foreign Trade, Costa Rica
Contributions from participants
European Union English | Español
Presentations
The media industry is very broad and includes several services. The media sector incorporates both the production of content, such as news, entertainment, education and research, as well as its distribution through the means of mass communication. Mass media includes the press, television and radio broadcasting, film producing, video streaming, video games, online publishing, social media and podcasting, among others.
As it has been witnessed, the media industry is constantly evolving, driven recently by the digital economy, new and disruptive digitization technologies, the emergence of global and local market participants, and new distribution channels, propelled by technological convergence or evolution, all of which have had impacts in media value chain dynamics.
This session focused on the assessment of media mergers considering the new configuration of the media industry driven by the technological evolution and changes in consumer behaviour, as well as the growing importance of online services and large tech companies. In particular, the session considered the role played by the digital platforms and the OTT content distributors in the media industry, and their competition implications.
Background documentation
Call for contributions • English | Español
OECD note • English | Español
Background Note by Mexico • English | Español
Contributions from participants
Mexico • English | Español
Portugal • English | Español
Spain • English | Español
Speakers
Martin Peitz, Professor of Economics, at the University of Mannheim
Feng Zhu, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, Harvard University Bio
Diana Moss, President, American Antitrust Institute
Aleksandra Boutin, Founding Partner, Positive Competition Bio
Presentations
27 September 2022: National Competition Day of Brazil Agenda
29 September 2022: Ibero-American Forum on Competition Agenda | Orden del día
29 September 2022: Meeting of the Regional Competition Center for the Americas (CRC) Agenda | Orden del día
