OREANDA-NEWS. December 15, 2008. In view of the current economic situation, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) will reduce the period for processing petitions. The decision was made at a weekly session of the presidium of the FAS Russia's Collegium, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

"We must reduce the time for processing the petitions for transactions, submitted to FAS Russia, from ninety days, specified in the Competition Act, to thirty days in order to accelerate the process of accomplishing the transactions by the companies on the market. Processing time for financial organizations must be five days", said Igor Artemyev, the Head of FAS Russia.

FAS Russia has already started applying reduced period for processing petitions in the Central Office and sent relevant recommendations to its regional offices.

Earlier FAS Russia recommended the regional antimonopoly bodies to take into consideration changes in the financial position of the companies, when imposing "turnover" fines, and to apply the coefficient, which halves the calculated administrative fine, when defining the base administrative fines for antimonopoly violations calculated on the basis of the company's proceeds in 2007. At the same time, administrative fines cannot be lower than 1% of the net sales of the market where the violation occurred in the year preceding the year when the violation was revealed.

These measures are aimed at eliminating excessive administrative barriers and promptly applying antimonopoly control.