On 26-28 March 2019, the OECD KPC organised a workshop in Busan (South Korea) on competition rules in the transport sector. The panel of speakers included Mr. Michael Lee (Deputy Director, Int’l Cartel Div., KFTC), Mr. Daniel Boeshertz (head of the European Commission unit dealing with antitrust in the transport sector) and Mr. Jorge Nieto Rueda (Deputy Head of Public Aids and Draft Regulation Unit, Advocacy Department of the Spanish Competition Authority) and two OECD speakers Mr. Ruben Maximiano and Mr. Gaetano Lapenta.

Representatives from 12 Asian competition authorities (China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) attended the workshop and actively engaged in the discussions.

This event allowed participants to explore a sector that is currently facing disruptive innovation and raises challenges for traditional competition analytical tools. Regulators around the world are faced with concerns of unfair competition (e.g., taxi drivers vis-à-vis Uber drivers), waves of consolidation (e.g., big liner shipping alliances) or difficulties in applying and possibly adjusting traditional analytical tools for the digital age. ASEAN and Asia-Pacific antitrust watchdogs are all dealing with this type of issues at the moment and this workshop was a good and timely occasion for sharing their experiences and learning from each other.