Discuss (a) leniency

Anti-competitive practices are conducts that distort, prevent, or restrict competition — by agreement (rivals conspiring), by unilateral exclusion (dominance abused), or by combination (mergers ending the contest). The 2063 Act's prohibitions follow this typology (with the thresholds the Act and its notifications fix).4.1.1 Cartels and CollusionThe horizontal conspiracy: price fixing, output quotas, market sharing, bid suppression — the per se core worldwide. Detection's twin tools: leniency (the first confessor walks — the cartel's own members turned informants) and screening (screening procurement bids for patterns — the " bid- rigging algorithm" of flags: identical bids, rotation, suspicious margins). Nepal's procurement context makes bid-rigging the live frontier (the Public Procurement Act's interface).4.1.2 Abuse of Dominant PositionDominance itself is lawful; its abuse is not. The classical catalogue: unfair prices or terms (exploitative); predatory pricing (selling below cost to kill, recouping later); refusal to deal and discrimination; margin squeeze (wholesale priced to choke the retail rival); exclusivity and loyalty rebates (the Intel/Google pattern of the prescribed cases); tying and bundling (the Microsoft line). The exam formula: dominance (within the defined market) + abusive conduct + effect on competition = violation. The defences: objective justification (cost, quality, safety) — the dominant firm's burden to explain.4.1.3 Price Fixing and Bid RiggingThe twin hard cores: price fixing (agreement on prices, discounts, or formulas — the per se…