Sergey Puzyrevskiy: implementing unified and clear procedures in tariff-setting will discipline monopolies

The Antimonopoly Service presented a new concept of tariff regulation to the Association of Russian Counsels

“Today we have dozens of thousands of regulated organizations for which the tariffs are set by the government”, started Deputy Head of FAS Sergey Puzyrevskiy. “First of all, regulation concerns natural monopolies”.

“The major issue for the tariff system is lack of a coherent scheme of the tariff regulatory framework. What does it lead to? It leads to the issues of price regulation “falling apart” by sectors”, stated Deputy Head of FAS. “As a result, all legal construct is built up on by-laws that creates uncertainly for the regulator and the judicial system”.

“Another issue is absence of clear tariff-setting procedures”, indicated Sergey Puzyrevskiy. “Thus, all tariff regulation is performed “manually”, when setting tariffs regional regulators study materials separately for each organization. It causes tariff discrimination when one entity has a higher tariff and another – a lower one, in spite of both being in comparable conditions”.

“In such a situation, out job is to determine the principles, methods and procedures of tariff regulation under the single law”, said Deputy Head of FAS. “Talking about methodology, there should be no differences in approaches to monopolistically high price and tariff regulation. We can make decisions on deregulating some monopolies but they need to understand clearly that as soon as they cross the established parameters, antimonopoly control will be applied, particularly, in the part of fixing monopolistically high price”.

Head of FAS Legal department Artem Molchanov outlined experience of the Antimonopoly Service on drafting and adopting Fair Practice Codes to the Commission. “So far three Codes are adopted. There main objective is to encourage the companies observe fair rules of the game on socially important markets. FAS proposes to extrapolate this experiences to the member-countries of BRICS, CIS and EUEA [Eurasian Economic Union]”.

According to Artem Molchanov, unified pro-competitive rules will create equal conditions for performance of market participants, and reduce administrative barriers for market, entry, etc.

Deputy Head of FAS Sergey Puzyrevskiy also awarded FAS Certificates of Merit and Letters of Acknowledgment:

- Certificates of Merit: Professor Evgeny Gubin (Dr Hab. of Law), Head of Business Law Chair, Moscow State University

- Letters of Acknowledgment: Maria Yegorova (Dr Hab. of Law),Head of the Commission for Improving the Antimonopoly Law, Moscow chapter of the Association of Russian Counsels; Viktor Vaipan (Dr of Law), Deputy of the Commission for Improving the Antimonopoly Law, Moscow chapter of the Association of Russian Counsels.