India: Passed Competition (Amendment) Bill 2023 including changes to anti-competitive agreements regulation

On 29 March 2023, the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, passed the Competition (Amendment) Bill 2023 amending the 2002 Competition Act. The Bill defines anti-competitive agreements as any agreement that could negatively impact market competition, including accords on production, storage and supply of goods and services. Furthermore, the Bill outlines several criteria for determining the “adverse effect on competition” and notes that the criteria will be applied to agreements between entities involved in similar or different business activities. Finally, the Bill would expand the applicability of the regulations to include in the scope of investigations into anti-competitive agreements the parties that facilitated an unlawful agreement. Compared to the introduced version of the Bill, the version passed by the Lok Sabha would give the Competition Commission of India (CCI), India’s anti-trust regulator, the power to impose penalties based on global turnovers of firms instead of solely on annual domestic turnover. The Bill is now awaiting approval from the Upper House.