IGOR ARTEMIEV: FAS SUPPORTS FAIR BUSINESS AND PROTECTS IT FROM UNFAIR COMPETITION

Igor Artemiev, Head of the FAS Russia, spoke about the planned changes in legislation and implementation of the National Plan for the development of competition in the Russian Federation during the Expanded Meeting of the Board of the FAS Russia

The Expanded Meeting of the Board of the FAS Russia was held on October 6, 2020. During his speech, the Head of the FAS Russia summed up the interim results of the implementation of the National Plan for the development of competition in the Russian Federation for 2018 - 2020.

He said that in all sectors of the economy there were at least three economic entities, one of them belongs to private business, there was a general prohibition on creation and operation of unitary enterprises in competitive markets, internal network roaming was canceled, mechanisms were created to reduce prices for medicines included in the list of life saving medicines, the ability of regions to decide on price changes in citizens' fees for public services above limit values was limited, and so on.

At the same time, 40% of the measures provided for by the National Plan were not completed. In particular, a number of Federal laws have not been adopted, including the “Fifth Antimonopoly package”, laws on compulsory licensing of medicines, on state regulation of tariffs, and changes in the legislation on natural monopolies. All this needs to be done till the end of the year.

“At the meeting with the President of the Russian Federation, I told him about the problems related to the current legislation. As for the “digital legislation”, the rules of non – discriminatory access to natural resources and in relation to Railways-all this is hopelessly outdated. We need new up-to-date rules and laws corresponded to our realities. And the Russian President supports us,” assured Igor Artemiev.

The Head of the FAS Russia outlined the main directions of reforms contained in the National Plan for the development of competition for 2021-2025, and said that the FAS has already submitted a draft decree of the Russian President to the government of the Russian Federation.

“On behalf of the President, we have developed an “anti-cartel package”, the government supported it, but we have not been able to accept it for almost a year. Because there are some questions from big businesses. It should be borne in mind that the FAS supports fair business and protects it from unfair, bandit, and gray schemes,” the speaker said.

The Head of the FAS also noted the need to reform the legislation on procurement of individual legal entities.

“There are a number of problems with the Federal law No. 223-FZ. And we need to achieve transparency and unification of procedures, as in 44-FZ, but not so harshly,” said Igor Artemiev.

For this we need to establish uniform requirements for bank guarantees, a closed list of requirements to procurement participants and to the composition of applications, requirements on the availability of the procurement participant’s "universal" and "special" pre-qualification, a limited list of e-marketplaces for procurement in electronic form, as well as the possibility for the Antimonopoly Authorities to carry out customer checks as in 44-FZ.