The Antimonopoly Service added to the National Competition Development Plan

FAS presented a list of those sectors of the economy where development of competition should be come a priority of the state policy

The draft National Competition Development Plan was added with the spheres of the economy where “competition culture” should be implemented.

The following fields are being discussed: health care (including markets of medicinal drugs and medical products), the market of social services, agriculture (including agro-technologies, package solutions, modern breeding, digital agricultural platforms and pant protection tools), road construction, telecommunications, information technologies, the housing-and-utilities sector (including heat supply, water supply and drainage), gas supply, oil and oil products, natural monopolies, transportation, manufacturing, financial markets, the electric power industry.

The draft Plan indicates the expected results of developing competition in those fields. For instance, the measures in health care will improve medicinal drug availability and reduce their prices.

The share of Russian elite seeds and pedigree animals on the domestic markets should increase with will reduce dependence of the national market from foreign breeding material. Competition should increase at the global scale since actions embedded in the National Competition Development Plan form Russian supply on the global market of modern technologies.

The draft Plan provides for reducing the share of road construction procurement recognized invalid. It should be pointed out that in 2016 it reached 30%. After the Plan coming into effect, the number of such procurements should go down by 5% and over annually.  It, therefore, will help save a considerable part of budgetary funds.

Another measure is to abolish domestic roaming. Mobile operators will have to eliminate the unreasonable difference in the rates for cellular communications services for travels within Russia.

According to Deputy Head of FAS Sergey Puzyrevskiy, the Plan is designed to achieve the following goals: first, it will prevent federal and regional authorities devising and adopting legislative acts that could excessively restrict initiative in economic activities and counter the competition principle”.

“Second, businessmen will appreciate the advantages of doing fair business”, continued Sergey Puzyrevskiy. “To a considerable extent it will encourage reduction of collusions and other forms of anticompetitive behavior”.

“Third, consumers will form a clear understanding that competition is beneficial since bona fide behavior on the market and compliance with the antimonopoly law leads to expanded product range, improved quality of goods and services and price reduction”, concluded Deputy Head of FAS.

The draft National Competition Development Plan, together with the list of economic sectors, has been submitted to the Government of the Russian Federation.