During the recent years, and despite the growing global trend in the adoption of competition laws, the merger of several Japanese, American and European firms to further benefit from economies of scale and also to compensate reduced profits caused by international competition, has been in the limelight of world competition economics. Enhancing competitiveness of the domestic enterprises in the path towards joining WTO has been another motivation for industrial enterprises to merger. Given the Profusion and dispersion of Iranian firms in many industrial fields of activity, and in order to bolster the international competitiveness of Iranian firms in line with such ultimate goals as WTO accession, this strategy must be examined and evaluated in particular against international experiences, to be utilized appropriate to our specific conditions to achieve the above mentioned objectives.
In a global perspective, there are many well-structured markets with a small number of firms owning a large market share. In recent years, the quasi-monopolistic structure of international markets has been on the rise, making it an important issue in industrial strategies towards entering international markets and maintaining domestic markets. As achieving economies of scale, and diversification and enhancement of investment capabilities in marketing and customer services, as well as research and development are now fundamental requirements for enterprises to be active in international arenas, emphasis shall be on the adoption of an appropriate competition policy along with encouraging the establishment of large enterprises and the development of small and medium sized industry clusters. The small scale of Iranian firms prevents them from effectively acting in the well-structured global markets, and thus is the need for the promotion of competition through properly targeted and administered competition policies, persuasion of firms to merge and integrate, and assistance to the development of industrial clusters in order to enhance the competitiveness of domestic firms.

Objectives

• Examining the major experiences of countries such as Japan, China, South Korea, Malaysia, India, as well as those in Europe and South America;
• Studying laws and regulations applicable to mergers and acquisitions in Iran;
• Studying the situation of concentration among industrial enterprises in Iran;
• Proposing a competition policy to the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade regarding mergers and increasing the scale of enterprises;
• Modifying and Proposing relevant laws, regulations and incentives to foster competitiveness of the Iranian enterprises specifically in exports.

Beneficiary Organizations

• Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade;
• Competition Committee;
•  the Government; and 
• the Parliament.