Fourteen competition authorities in East Asia gathered for the 13th East Asia Top Level Officials Meeting on Competition Law and Policy (EATOP) Meeting in Bali on 6-7 September 2017 to discuss priorities and interests of each economy in the area of competition law and policy, including sharing development, stock taking of each challenges, and discuss the way ahead in enforcement cooperation.

EATOP is a venue for competition and competition related top officials to meet together and exchange views on competition policy to foster the network among competition and competition related agencies in East Asia and in order to help the mutual understanding and deepen competition environment according to the individual development level on competition policy. The first meeting supported by Indonesia by hosting it for the first time in Bogor on 2005.

In addition, KPPU hosted the 10th East Asia Conference on Competition Policy (EAC) on Cartel in Foods Sector on the following day and participated for more than 160 stakeholders, including government, legal practitioner, and academic. The food sector is selected as the main theme of the EATOP and EAC considering the priority put by Indonesia on the sector. As we may know, In Indonesia, the problem in foods is something that recurring, which is limiting a supply to the market by intermediaries which control by dominant middle man. This result on high price at the consumer level and low price at the farmers.

Apart of these events, KPPU and the Indonesian Academic Network on Competition valued the importance of having full support to the academician in building their network and expertise, so that they can join hand with competition authorities to develop competition policy in the region. The first international seminar attended by academics in the region was initiated in conjunction with EATOP and EAC on the 6th September 2017. These events were participated by academics from other universities in the region and discuss issues in the competition which values important to the academics.

This first gathering led to the establishment of the East Asia Academic Network on Competition Policy, which will be served as a forum to bridge between academics and competition authorities in the region. This forum gains a full support from EATOP members by having them as a back-to-back event with every EATOP meeting, which rotated annually.

It is hoped that the events, which took placed by a great financial support from the Japan Fair Trade Commission and the Asian Development Bank Institute, and also the German International Cooperation, can bring better collaboration between competition authorities themselves, and also between competition authorities and the world of academics. Following the success of these meetings, Australia has agreed to take the honor to host these event in 2018.