ANATOLY GOLOMOLZIN: BURYATIA SHOWS POSITIVE DYNAMICS OF FULFILLING THE NATIONAL PLAN

On 21 June 2019, in Ulan-Ude, Deputy Head of FAS Anatoly Golomolzin summed up the intermediary results of implementing the National Competition Development Plan and discussed mainstreaming the Action Plan of the Road Map for competition support in Buryatia at a meeting with First Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Republic of Buryatia, Igor Zuraev.

Opening the meeting, Deputy Head of FAS reminded of the Agreement on Cooperation signed between FAS and Buryatia Government in July 2018. He emphasized that there is full support to executing theNational Competition Development Plan approved by an order of the President of the Russian Federation.

Anatoly Golomolzin praised the region’s efforts to pursue theNational Competition Development Plan:

“The situation in Buryatia is rather favourable because all provisions of the Plan are being executed, including achievements of the key targets”.

He continued: “The Republic ahs undertaken increased obligations in comparison with the standard indicators (Buryatia has 36 in comparison with the minimum 33 indicators from the list approved by the State Council on competition development). The obligations are executed on all indicators in Buryatia. For instance, the share of small and medium business in public procurement and procurement for the needs of regulated entities and (or) companies with state participation. The number of state unitary enterprises in competitive sectors is decreasing, giving space to business. An important fact is that violations by the authorities are also decreasing”.

“This is determined not simply by current operations, but also by the fact that all authorities in the Republic made competition protection and development one of their priorities and the so-called compliances are adopted: documents that organized the work of the authorities towards observing the antimonopoly law”,  continued Deputy Head of FAS Anatoly Golomolzin. “Similar work is continued for municipalities”.

Head of Buryatia OFAS, Elizaveta Potapova, pointed out that in 2018 Buryatia reduced antimonopoly violations by the authorities 23% in comparison with 2017.

Deputy Head of FAS Legal Department Oksana Kuznetsova gave positive dynamics of Buryatia’s achievements: “The share of procurement from small and medium business was 29.71% in 2018 against 26.56% in 2017, the number of unitary enterprises decreased 10.6 %, which is indicative of the productive efforts towards fulfilling the Order and instructions issued by the President of Russia following the State Council”.

Deputy Head of FASAnatoly Golomolzin informed about FAS involvement in executing the National projects and reviewed conformity of the National projects under implementation in Buryatia to the goals and objectives of the National Plan.

“The National competition development Programme and National projects are two mutually reinforcing areas. Thus, all national Programmes and National projects will include measures from the National Competition Development Plan, and all National projects should be executed providing conditions for competition”, statedAnatoly Golomolzin.

Summing up the outcome of the meeting and the progress in implementing theNational Competition Development Plan, Deputy Head of FAS added:

“We must complete adjusting the Road Maps by September 2019, so that in the 1.5 remaining years we can focus on fulfilling them. Following the meeting, information about the work done will be published monthly.  The situation should be evaluated not only by federal and regional authorities by also by public at large, and the All-Russia People’s Front and Interfax Agency engaged in this work under a pilot project”, underlined Anatoly Golomolzin.

Commenting the earlier decision of FAS and Buryatia Government on developing on-exchange timber trade, Anatoly Golomolzin and Igor Zuraev stressed the importance for forest enterprises in the republic to shift to 100% sales through the exchange. Such practice is already building up in some regions of Russia, it is a measure aimed at enhancing performance efficiency, pricing transparency and tax collection.