MEETING OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION VLADIMIR PUTIN WITH THE HEAD OF THE FAS RUSSIA MAXIM SHASKOLSKY
Vladimir Putin had a working meeting with Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Maxim Shaskolsky. In particular, they spoke about pricing in socially significant markets
V. Putin: Mr Shaskolsky, the Federal Antimonopoly Service has many responsibilities, and price control is one of them. This is especially important today. Indeed, at the moment, we are keeping inflation within certain boundaries, and it is decreasing; it tends to decrease. Nevertheless, how is this work progressing? I would like to hear your report.
M. Shaskolsky: Mr President,
Applying Control over pricing in socially significant commodity markets is of priority importance. I am talking not only about food products, but also medicines, petroleum products, building materials and cellular communications services.
Our food production market is well developed, it is a highly competitive market with a large number of participants. Therefore, in this area, the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s efforts include measures to help boost harvests and production volumes. For example, we are monitoring the process of allocating government subsidies to agricultural producers, and have issued about 35 warnings in recent time to the various bodies that are responsible for ensuring that agricultural producers have non-discriminatory access to such subsidies.
In addition, we are working on providing mineral fertilizers to our agricultural producers in the necessary volume at affordable prices. For this purpose, together with colleagues from the ministries, we have developed a trade and sales policy that takes into account the procedure for setting prices for fertilizers, the procedure for indexing such prices, and the maximum amounts of remuneration for distributors. As a result, such trade and marketing policies have been approved by the largest producers of mineral fertilizers, and the Federal Antimonopoly Service ensures compliance. As a result, our agricultural producers are fully provided with mineral fertilizers at affordable prices.
Another order you gave us had to do with retail chain margins on socially significant food products. We have taken steps to ensure that the margins on socially significant food products in federal retail chains have gone down from 22 to 5.5 percent. Such responsible pricing was also supported by 79 regional retail chains. We have carried out additional work with regard to specific foods such as bread, milk, sugar,
the so-called borsch basket, and federal retail chains have made commitments to maintain a margin of no more than 5 percent for the most popular goods in each category.
V. Putin: Good.
What other issues would you like to discuss? Please.
M. Shaskolsky: As I said, we are also working on the pharmaceuticals market. We have a list of vital, essential medicines. We have revised the prices of 14,000 such medicines, of which 7,000 have been reduced by an average of 35 percent.
In addition, in the building materials market, we found that the price increase was caused not only by market conditions, but also by certain businesses’ actions, which, among other things, focused on the so-called export alternative. We have conducted a number of investigations, initiated cases against metallurgists, against manufacturers of materials made of wood, aerated concrete, glass. Investigations are ongoing. We can say that, among other things, there is a decrease in prices for a number of building materials.
V. Putin: Good. This is very important, bearing in mind our plans for housing construction first of all.