Competition and Antitrust Law

Bhandari Law and Partners has built real depth in competition and antitrust work over the years — not a service we picked up as an afterthought to corporate practice, but an area where our lawyers have a genuine, working understanding of how Nepal's competition framework actually gets applied. We advise clients on both sides of this: businesses trying to stay clear of anti-competitive risk, and businesses that believe a competitor or dominant player has crossed the line.

 

The Legal Framework

Competition matters in Nepal are governed primarily by the Competition Promotion and Market Protection Act, 2063 (2007), which prohibits anti-competitive agreements, restrictive trade practices, and the abuse of a dominant market position. The Act set up a Competition Promotion and Market Protection Board to oversee enforcement, and disputes under it are heard before a designated commercial bench of the court. Alongside this core statute, related conduct — hoarding, black marketing, and similar market misconduct — falls under the Black Marketing and Some Other Social Offences and Punishment Act, 2032 (1975), and consumer-facing unfair trade practices are also addressed through the Consumer Protection Act, 2075 (2018).

 

What counts as abuse of dominance under Nepali law is fairly broad in scope — a dominant enterprise using its position in a way that restricts market access, unfairly disadvantages competitors, or distorts pricing can fall foul of the Act, whether or not there was deliberate intent to manipulate the market. That's precisely why advisory work in this space matters: a business practice that looks like ordinary competitive behavior from the inside can look very different to a regulator or a competitor bringing a complaint.

 

What We Do

Reviewing agreements and practices

 We review contracts, distribution arrangements, and business practices that could be read as anti-competitive — agreements that restrict market access, fix prices, allocate markets, or otherwise raise dominance concerns — before they become a liability rather than after.

 

Business practice advisory

We advise clients on how their day-to-day commercial practices intersect with competition law, so decisions around pricing, distribution, and market conduct are made with the legal risk already factored in.

 

Compliance documentation

 We draft and review the compliance documents businesses need to demonstrate they're operating within the bounds of the Act — internal policies, trade practice guidelines, and the paperwork regulators or courts will actually look at if a question arises.

 

Legal due diligence. We prepare legal due diligence reports specifically focused on anti-competitive risk, which matters particularly in merger, acquisition, and joint venture transactions where a resulting entity's market position could itself raise competition concerns.

 

Litigation and representation

 Where a matter proceeds to a dispute, we represent clients in competition litigation before the courts, whether defending against an allegation of anti-competitive conduct or bringing a claim against a competitor's practices.

 

Our law firm works to help clients minimize antitrust exposure and meet the compliance standards the Act sets out — ideally well before a regulator or a competitor has reason to come asking.

 

Who We Represent

We advise businesses across sectors who need to understand where ordinary competitive conduct ends and legal exposure begins — manufacturers, distributors, and market-dominant players navigating day-to-day compliance, as well as companies going through a merger or acquisition where competition risk needs to be assessed as part of the deal itself.