Eight winning stories and four stories worthy of honorable mention were selected among 54 entries submitted by both government authorities and non-governmental organizations from around the world, along the following themes:
 

• Theme 1 - Advancing competition advocacy in times of rapid changes in the global landscape
  
  
• Theme 2 - Promoting a culture of compliance through innovative advocacy and digital tools
  
  
• Theme 3 - Embedding competition principles in the green and digital transitions
  
  
• Theme 4 - Global convergence vs. country specificity: contextualizing competition law and policy
   

Panelists of the ICN-WBG 2026 Competition Advocacy Contest:

• Eleanor M. Fox, Walter J. Derenberg Professor of Trade Regulation, New York University School of Law
  
• Mariana Tavares de Araujo, Senior Partner, Levy & Salomão Advogados
  
• Mario Guadamillas, Practice Manager; Competitiveness Unit; Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, World Bank
  Seidu Dauda, Senior Economist; Competitiveness Unit; Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, World Bank
• Rogelio Granguillhome, Economist; Competitiveness Unit; Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, World Bank

Theme 1 - Advancing competition advocacy in times of rapid changes in the global landscape

Governments are increasingly turning to industrial policies, subsidies and state support to strengthen strategic sectors and supply chains. These measures can promote growth and resilience, but risk distorting markets if not designed with competition in mind. For example, evidence suggests that subsidies raise market share but not productivity: in an OECD working paper, subsidies to large manufacturing firms increased their global market shares but had no or negative impacts on investment and productivity. Competition advocacy is essential to ensure that measures targeting resilience and self-sufficiency promote efficiency and investment rather than distortions or market concentration.

Winners

Paraguay

Following a landmark abuse of dominance case concluded in 2023, Comisión Nacional de la Competencia (CONACOM) leveraged the case to introduce legislative reform in the national card payments sector. During the case, CONACOM found that the largest card payment processor had imposed exclusivity on card issuers, limiting competition and reinforcing market fragmentation in the absence of rules on interoperability. Building on these findings, CONACOM recommended regulatory reform to ensure interconnectivity and interoperability across payment systems. Through engagement with the Central Bank, formal opinions on draft legislation and advocacy during the parliamentary process, CONACOM raised competition as a core policy concern. The resulting law, enacted in 2025, empowers the Central Bank to mandate interoperability across payment networks. This reform is expected to lower entry barriers for competing processors and eliminate the need for businesses and consumers to rely on multiple cards and POS systems.

Nigeria

Startup Abuja, a non-profit organisation, embedded competition principles in its startup ecosystem support activities, which address structural barriers limiting competition for startups and MSMEs. Startup Abuja identified key constraints, including regulatory uncertainty, limited access to procurement and partnerships and market concentration, that disproportionately disadvantaged early-stage firms. In response, Startup Abuja organized startup conferences, facilitated connections between founders and investors, provided training, mentorship and ecosystem support and advocated for better business conditions for SMEs and startups. Its advocacy emphasized simplifying market entry, increasing transparency in opportunity allocation and integrating competition impact assessments into innovation policies.

Honorable Mention

Egypt

Building on its Competitive Neutrality Strategy, the Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) led a whole-of-government reform to eliminate tax and fee exemptions that distorted competition between state-owned and private firms. ECA identified tax neutrality as a core structural issue and demonstrated how preferential fiscal treatment undermined market contestability and investment incentives. Through inter-agency coordination, ECA’s efforts led to the 2023 adoption of the Law on the Abolition of Tax Exemptions and Privileges for State-Owned Companies and a government-wide administrative circular to ensure consistent implementation. The reform established a uniform fiscal framework across all economic operators. Following the 2024 regulations, state-owned enterprises have been brought into the tax net. By embedding competitive neutrality into binding legislation and removing distortive advantages, the reform is expected to strengthen competition and improve resource allocation across the economy. The initiative has already delivered significant impact, contributing to a 35% increase in tax revenues, approximately USD 1.4 billion.

Theme 2 – Promoting a culture of compliance through innovative advocacy and digital tools

Building a culture of compliance is one of the cornerstones of effective competition policy. From AI-powered market screening to online training platforms, TV shows to summer schools, and interactive compliance programs for businesses, innovation can transform the way competition authorities engage with stakeholders. Digital tools offer new possibilities to detect, prevent, and communicate about anticompetitive behavior. The rise of accessible technology and social media platforms also enables agencies to reach broader audiences and measure the effectiveness of their advocacy campaigns more precisely.

Winners

Dominican Republic

The Comisión Nacional de Defensa de la Competencia (PROCOMPETENCIA) implemented a Training Plan on Detection of Collusion in Public Procurement in 2025 to address systemic failures in identifying bid rigging across more than 64,000 annual procurement processes. Public officials had routinely misclassified clear signs of collusion, such as identical bids, market allocation and coordinated participation, as administrative irregularities, and were unaware of the authority’s investigative powers. PROCOMPETENCIA trained over 800 officials across nearly 200 institutions, alongside journalists, and developed tools to operationalize detection. The resulting Guide for the Prevention and Detection of Collusion introduced two innovations: a “Collusion Traffic Light” system categorizing 49 red flags with actionable responses, and a tender assessment tool to ensure pro-competitive design before launch. The initiative led to a measurable shift in institutional knowledge and the training resulted in five formal collusion investigations in 2025, with additional cases underway.

Guatemala

Facing a budget freeze at inception, the Superintendencia de Competencia (SdC) confronted an extraordinary scenario: a legal mandate to enforce competition law, but no funds to operate, risking a months-long regulatory vacuum. In response, the Board executed a “pre-budgetary” approach, internally building and deploying a fully functional digital platform using AI-assisted, low-code tools. Launched on Day 1 of the Board’s mandate, the portal live-streamed the Head of Agency selection, published draft regulations in real time and opened the first channel for reporting barriers to competition, effectively making the Authority operational without spending public funds. This radical, startup-style approach prevented an estimated six-month blackout and ensured 100% compliance with statutory deadlines. It stands as a striking example of “frugal innovation” in public administration.

Honorable Mentions

The Philippines

The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) developed a Competition Compliance Program (CCP) Toolkit to address weak business awareness and limited capacity to comply with competition law, particularly among MSMEs. The Toolkit provides practical guidance, templates, and step-by-step procedures to help firms identify risks and prevent anti-competitive practices, fostering a culture of voluntary compliance and reducing legal uncertainty. Building on this, PCC launched a nationwide advocacy model combining the Competition Local Advocacy Network (CLAN) and the Competition Advocacy Pledge (CAP). Through partnerships with state universities and business associations, the initiative decentralized advocacy, delivering standardized yet locally tailored trainings and digital compliance tools. By 2025, it had reached over 2,400 stakeholders across hundreds of localities and secured formal commitments from firms across multiple sectors. Together, these initiatives shift competition policy from reactive enforcement to proactive compliance, strengthening market transparency, reducing anti-competitive conduct, and supporting more competitive, inclusive economic outcomes.

Singapore

The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) developed the AI Markets (AIM) Toolkit to address emerging competition and consumer protection risks associated with the rapid deployment of artificial intelligence across sectors. The Toolkit includes a voluntary self-assessment framework for evaluating AI systems against core principles of competition and consumer protection, to reduce risks around algorithmic collusion, restricted market access and AI-driven consumer harm. The Toolkit incorporates both process-based checks and technical tests, such as model explainability and fairness, and generates automated reports with tailored recommendations. Using the Toolkit may serve as a mitigating factor for firms in penalty assessments, incentivizing early compliance. While still in its early stages, the initiative has already attracted strong industry engagement with hundreds of GitHub visits, and highlights how compliance and innovation can support each other.

Theme 3 - Embedding competition principles in the green and digital transitions

The green and digital transitions are reshaping economies and creating new markets, which can reinforce each other: digital technologies could cut global greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 20 percent by 2050 in the energy, materials, and mobility sectors (World Bank, 2023). However, these transformations also bring new risks of concentration and conducts. To ensure the transitions remain open and contestable, competition authorities are taking action on several fronts through scalable solutions. In digital markets, sector reviews expose competition risks in platforms, cloud, adtech and AI. Market studies and regulation together promote interoperability, data portability and fair access to essential inputs. In the green sphere, authorities are issuing guidelines that tie environmental subsidies to proportionality and competition safeguards, and publishing guidance that clarifies when firms can cooperate on sustainability goals. Through advocacy and monitoring, authorities also tackle practical barriers, such as grid access or regulatory bottlenecks, to enable entry and investment in emerging green sectors and critical minerals.

Winners

Australia

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) conducted a five-year inquiry into digital platform services, producing substantial evidence across ten reports. The reports covered issues in search, social media, app stores, ad tech, cloud computing and generative AI. The inquiry identified systemic concerns, including self-preferencing, restrictions on interoperability, high switching costs, data-driven barriers to entry and opaque advertising practices, as well as gaps in merger oversight. It found that the existing legal framework was insufficient to address the scale and complexity of harms in digital markets. In response, the ACCC proposed a reform agenda, including the introduction of economy-wide consumer protections (such as prohibitions on unfair trading practices), mandatory safeguards against scams and harmful content and targeted codes of conduct for designated platforms to address anti-competitive behavior. The government has already adopted and progressed key recommendations, reforming the unfair contract terms law, announcing it would legislate a new prohibition on unfair trading practices and consulting on the design of a new digital competition framework.

COMESA

The COMESA Competition and Consumer Commission (COMESA CCC) led a comprehensive reform of its competition framework to address critical enforcement gaps in digital markets and integrate environmental sustainability into competition policy. Triggered by practical challenges, including limited jurisdiction over digital mergers and difficulties addressing platform dominance under traditional legal tests, COMESA CCC undertook a four-year advocacy campaign to modernize its law. Adopted in December 2025, the new law introduces transaction value thresholds to capture digital mergers, new provisions on gatekeeper conduct and economic dependence and recognition of data control and network effects in assessing dominance. It also breaks new ground by explicitly incorporating environmental sustainability considerations into competition and consumer protection analysis.

Honorable Mention

Lithuania

The Competition Council of the Republic of Lithuania promoted competition in key green transition markets by addressing risks in EV charging infrastructure and vehicle aftersale services. A market study of the rapidly expanding EV charging sector identified that municipal participation and tender design, such as overly restrictive contract terms, limited lot structures and unclear award criteria, could reduce market contestability and entrench local monopolies. The Council issued recommendations to municipalities and ministries on how to improve tender processes for more competition and the Ministry of Transport published further guidance. In parallel, the Council tackled anti-competitive practices in aftersales markets by engaging dealerships to correct misleading warranty terms and improve independent repairers’ access to essential tools and data. Consumers can now service vehicles without voiding warranties. The initiative is expected to accelerate EV uptake by ensuring affordable and accessible infrastructure and services, while already delivering measurable benefits, including at least EUR 4.5 million in consumer savings.

Theme 4 - Global convergence vs. country specificity: contextualizing competition law and policy

While competition law is grounded in common economic principles, its application must often reflect local realities. The ongoing debate between global convergence and national specificity raises important questions about how competition regimes can be adapted to diverse economic structures, levels of development and institutional capacities without compromising on their core goals. Many jurisdictions adapt global best practices to local and regional contexts shaped by informality, inequality, and structural market constraints. Advocating for policies that reflect these contexts, while maintaining clear consumer welfare and efficiency objectives, can enhance the legitimacy and effectiveness of competition systems.

Winners

Dominican Republic

The Comisión Nacional de Defensa de la Competencia (PROCOMPETENCIA) shaped a major legislative reform of the solid waste management sector. PROCOMPETENCIA identified six critical competition restrictions in the original version of the reform, including exclusive regional landfills, forced vertical integration, discriminatory financial support for recycling technologies and tariff increases of up to 3,750% without economic justification, and proposed targeted, pro-competitive alternatives. While only minor adjustments were initially adopted by the legislature, the Executive Branch issued a constitutional veto grounded substantially PROCOMPETENCIA’s analysis, preventing the immediate implementation of the most restrictive provisions. Following enactment, business associations launched a constitutional challenge invoking the authority’s findings, with PROCOMPETENCIA formally engaged in proceedings before the Constitutional Court. The intervention safeguarded market contestability in a key environmental sector, protected SMEs and existing operators and mitigated risks of higher costs and reduced service quality.

French Polynesia

The Polynesian Competition Authority (APC), in partnership with the Institute for Small Markets in Law & Economics (ISLE), implemented an ex-ante competition advocacy intervention to address structurally high prices in essential goods markets. In response to affordability concerns, policymakers considered subsidies, exclusive authorizations and protective regulation, which risked entrenching incumbents and further reducing market contestability. The APC conducted a competition assessment of the draft legislation. It recommended non-discrimination rules, access obligations, proportionality tests and sunset and review clauses. ISLE supported the analysis through comparative evidence from other small jurisdictions. Through parliamentary hearings and technical engagement, several safeguards were incorporated into the draft law, shifting policy design toward contestable market structures.