Timophey Nizhegorodtsev: today we have all chances to launch self-regulation in trade

Efficiency of this institution to a considerable extent depends on rethinking the past experience and taking all errors into account

Head of FAS Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade, Timophey Nizhegorodtsev, stated at the IV All-Russian Research-to-Practice Conference on “Ensuring competition in trade activities” in Kazan: “Adopting the latest package of amendments to the Law on Trade, we have all chances to launch self-regulation in this field. However, we need to critically review the past, not very successful experiences of such work”. The event was organized by the Federal Antimonopoly Service, FAS “Centre for Education and Methodics” and Tatarstan OFAS.

According to Timophey Nizhegorodtsev, this work should be organized, in particular, involving not only market players but also regulators, members of the State Duma and senators of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. It is also necessary to ensure mandatory execution of the decisions made under the frame of self-regulation, and the most important – a mechanism should be devised to resolve disagreements that market players have not been able to overcome on their own.

“If we can do this, we will avoid annual amendments to the law and resolve disagreements between suppliers, producers and retail chains in the contractual practice”, emphasized Head of FAS sectoral Department.

He added that currently methodological work on those issues is undertaken by Skolkovo Management School in Moscow that has become a discussion platform on self-regulation in trading. “The work is supervised by President of Skolkovo Management School, Andrey Sharonov, and we are grateful to Skolkovo for their efforts and intend to take an active part in the project”, concluded Timophey Nizhegorodtsev.

The Conferences analyzed some aspects of regulating trading activity, the rules for economic entities involved in trading and food products supplies, discrimination and imposing disadvantageous supply conditions and much more.

Attendees included representatives of FAS, the authorities of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tatarstan, retail chains and associations of trading companies, goods producers and businessmen as well as practicing economists, lawyers and members of the academic community.