Competition and Poverty: The role of Competition Authorities

Fighting poverty remains a top priority and a key challenge to many countries including in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Although LAC countries have strengthened their competition policy in the past decade, poverty has increased in the region, mostly as effect of the recession which followed the Covid-19 pandemic. Given these factual circumstances, it seems relevant to address the role of competition policy in poverty reduction, including the question on how competition authorities can contribute to fighting poverty. This background note highlights the main issues regarding the role competition authorities can play in fighting poverty. For this purpose, it presents the interplay between competition policy and poverty reduction, then focuses on the role of competition authorities from both the enforcement and the advocacy perspectives. The final remarks point that competition authorities may help a broader policy to reduce poverty, particularly by prioritising its work to markets that have a greater impact on the poorest (e.g. markets of essential goods and services).This note was prepared as a background note for a discussion held on the topic during the 2023 OECD-IDB Latin American and Caribbean Competition Forum held in September 2023 in Ecuador.