This document summarises the activity of the National Commission for the Defence of Competition (CNDC) between January 2020 and December 2023, reviewing the quantity and quality of proceedings initiated and finished during the period, highlighting the main milestones of the agency and assessing the impact of competition policy enforcement on the Argentine economy.
This has been a particular time phase, which started almost simultaneously with the global pandemic caused by COVID-19. The challenges for the institution were many, but the overall balance is that the solutions implemented to tackle them resulted in long-term procedural and communicational improvements. In this sense, the incorporation of the Remote Procedures System (TAD, for its acronym in Spanish) for the notification of merger transactions and the filing of complaints for anti-competitive conducts, which can now be processed remotely; the enhancement of the website and its constant updating with institutional news; the execution of a communication and design strategy using didactic and accessible material like infographics; the incursion into social networks for the communication of news; the implementation of a fortnightly internal newsletter and a monthly newsletter addressed to the local and international antitrust community; among numerous changes that have contributed to the modernisation of the CNDC and to institutional strengthening.
The report also makes a quantitative assessment of the CNDC's performance by measuring the number of cases finalised and considering all types of proceedings within the agency: mergers, anti-competitive conducts, market investigations, advisory opinions, preliminary proceedings, pro-competitive recommendations and opinions requested by ENACOM (AFSCA cases).
It also reports on the decisions with the greatest impact on economic reality, taking into account sanctions for anti-competitive conducts, interim measures issued in the framework of investigations for anti-competitive practices, economic concentration operations subordinated to compliance with remedies, and pro-competitive recommendations issued in the framework of market investigations.
In order to assess the impact of the CNDC activity on the economy, the benefit of competition policy has been calculated considering sanction decisions for anticompetitive conducts and the subordination of mergers to compliance with remedies. At the same time, the economic sectors on which these decisions fell over the four years were identified.
The publication of the first two editions of the Jurisprudence Bulletin and the elaboration of a variety of working papers on different antitrust topics, such as the statute of limitations, the concept of control, fines for late notification, among others, consolidated a body of reflective texts on the CNDC's background and the agency's interpretations of fundamental competition law institutes.
Institutional relations with other competition agencies and the participation of the CNDC in different international and regional networks and fora were activities that could be sustained and even intensified thanks to the virtual format that turned popular after the pandemic, which enabled a constant collaboration in these areas. At the same time, the signing of new MoUs with different agencies in Latin America allowed further strengthening of exchange relations between competition authorities in the region.
In terms of regulations, it is worth highlighting the approval of the new Regulation for the Notification of Mergers which, among its modifications, formalised the implementation of the Summary Procedure (PROSUM) in the process of merger control.
Another institutional milestone of the period was the inauguration of its own building, based on the refurbishment of an office building that was in disuse and that became, as of 2021, the new headquarters of the CNDC.
2023 marked the 100th anniversary of the passing of Act No. 11.210, Argentina's first competition law. In September of this year, the CNDC invited to commemorate this anniversary the entire team of the agency, former officials and members of the National Commission, lawyers and economists who work closely with the authority, and other professionals specialised in competition advocacy, in what turned out to be an event that brought together the entire Argentine antitrust community to take stock of the first centenary of competition law enforcement at the national level and that, symbolically, also meant a closure of this management period.