MIKHAIL EVRAEV: WE ARE PREPARING AN UPDATED ROAD MAP ON COMPETITION DEVELOPMENT
Deputy Head of FAS Mikhail Evraev participated in an extended session of the Competition Support Public Council
The Council focused on the interim results of executing the National Competition Development Plan Мероприятии, approved by№ 618 Order of the President of the Russian Federation at the end of 2017.
According to Head of Bashkortostan, Radii Khabirov, the region has drafted a Republican Road Map for Developing Competition in line with updated Competition Development Standard endorsed by the Government of Russia. He emphasized that economic advancement of Bashkortostan depend on the quality of such work.
“Competition is one of the key conditions for developing Russian economy”, stated Mikhail Evraev from the outset.
He reminded that under No.618 Order of the President of the Russian Federation antimonopoly violations by the authorities should halve by 2020 compared to 2017 and share of public procurement from small and medium business should increase within the same period by at least 31%.
“We see that Bashkiria has good indicators achieving these targets. In 2018 violations were cut down by more than 60%, and the share of SME in procurement exceeds 32%”, pointed out Deputy Head of FAS, highlighting constructive collaboration of the republican authorities and OFAS in Bashkortostan.
The main objectives also include decreasing enterprises with state participation in the economy of Russia. So far, unitary enterprises in the region have decreased by only 19.2% and it is necessary to move on.
According to Mikhail Evraev, Bashkiria should pay attention to developing the markets of medical services, passenger transportation and advertising. The share of private business on these markets is very low.
He reminded that FAS is not only a body of antimonopoly control but also the tariff regulator.
“Today Bashkiria is on the 25th place in the ranking of publishing information in the State Information System of the Housing-and-Utilities Complex, which is indicative of a considerable work done by the republic. It is very goods”, stressed Mikhail Evraev.
Opening an account in the State Information System of the Housing-and-Utilities Complex, users can trace their payments in the electronic form, make payments without commissions, approach regulators, managing companies and homeowners associations. The system functionalities also allow organizing on-line meetings of residents of apartment blocks.
“The State Information System of the Housing-and-Utilities Complex is a good tool for regional authorities to be applied in the most painful area – the housing-and-utilities sector”, said Mikhail Evraev.
He detailed the amendments to the law on procurement passed in 2019 and FAS proposals on further improvement of the procurement system.
For instance, from 1 July 2019 bidders in the construction sector an simply file a “consent” to execute a contract instead of filling in huge “application forms” as used to be the rule. This option is accessible after an automated verification of a bidder’s pre-qualification at an electronic site. An auction starts only four hours after the deadline for filing applications.
“We’d like to extrapolate the procedure of construction auctions to other procurements, decreasing the start time of auctions to 1-2 hours, which will counter bid-rigging collusions and unlawful dissemination of information about the bidders”, explained Mikhail Evraev.
The ordering parties can now enter into a contract with the second participant if a contract with the auction winner is frustrated; “recurrent procurement cycles” are eliminated and mandatory external expert examination in contract execution.
Deputy Head of FAS emphasized that a second package of amendments is getting ready; it focuses on developing e-stores, the main purpose of which is to enable ordering parties to procure goods in one day.
The new amendments pay considerable attention to improving the unilateral contract termination procedure in terms of observing the balance of the parties’ rights and interests and automated formation of a business reputation ranking of businessmen.
The amendments will also include measures to counter “professional” complainants, proposals to expand functionalities of the Integrated Information System, directing complaints, notices and the entire communications between an ordering party and an executor on executing a contract, within the System.