THE FAS RUSSIA WAS AWARDED HONORABLE MENTION IN THE WORLD BANK – ICN COMPETITION ADVOCACY CONTEST

The ceremony of awarding the winners and honorable mentions was held online on September 22, 2020

The FAS Russia received an award in the category "Aligning industrial policies with competition principles" with the project "Transformation of unitary enterprises in Russia". The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was the winner in this category and Colombian Competition Authority received honorable mention along with the FAS Russia.

Vladimir Kachalin, Deputy Head of the Department for International Economic Cooperation, represented the FAS Russia at the award ceremony.

"In 2020, a law prohibiting the activities of unitary enterprises in competitive markets came into force. The reformation of unitary enterprises will help to protect markets from monopolization, promote more efficient implementation of state's industrial policy and eliminate low labor productivity. It is most visible at such sector as, for example, provision of house maintenance service. Previously, such services were provided by a single company having monopoly for house maintenance in a particular region or district. Now several companies started to compete with each other for this market, while the consumers received a possibility of choice between service providers", said Vladimir Kachalin.

The award in such a prestigious international competition indicates the recognition of the Russian Competition Authority's success by the international community.

"The FAS Russia has been participating in the World Bank – ICN Competition Advocacy Contest since 2015 and has won three prizes in various nominations. The annual recognition of our achievements puts us alongside world's leading competition authorities. If earlier we were learning, now we are able to develop and implement our own projects in state policy, which can become a good example for the competition authorities of other countries", said Andrey Tsyganov, Deputy Head of the FAS Russia.

Anna Atanasyan, Deputy Head of the Department for International Economic Cooperation and Sofia Kravchenko, Deputy Head of the Division for International Communications of the Department for International Economic Cooperation, also represented the FAS Russia at the event. This year's awards also were received by competition authorities of the United States, Portugal, Hong Kong, Mauritius, Mexico and Zambia.

You can also find the results of the contest at the link: https://www.worldbank.org/en/events/2019/11/11/2019-2020-competition-advocacy-contest

Reference:

In 2015, the FAS Russia was awarded in the nomination "Advancing pro-competitive reforms that facilitate well-being development and improvement" with the project "Guidelines for non-discriminatory access to purchasing potassium chloride", in 2018 – in the nomination "Building up markets to develop the private sector" with the project "Developing competition at tenders for public and municipal procurement of medicines by preventing individualization of procurement objects through identifying insignificant secondary medicine characteristics", in 2019 – in the nomination "Promoting competitive digital infrastructure, digital platforms and digital finance" with the project "Abolishing national and intra-network roaming".