OREANDA-NEWS. May 05, 2009. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) and its regional offices exercise the following types of control over the electric power market: control over the wholesale market, in particular, discovering price manipulations; control over retail markets, including non-discriminatory access to the services of the objects of natural monopolies; and control over economic concentration by allowing the transactions that require approval by the antimonopoly authorities in accordance with the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition", reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

Mr Korolyov reminded that in 2008, as shown by the statistical data collected by FAS Russia, the antimonopoly bodies most frequently initiated proceedings upon the signs of violations on the markets of electric power and heat power. In 2008, following the measures of antimonopoly control, FAS Russia and its offices opened 984 cases on the markets of electric power and heat power and issued 456 determinations.

In 2008 the antimonopoly bodies also initiated around 700 cases on antimonopoly violations related to the electric power supply industry, of which around 300 cases - on the markets of technical connection, and around180 cases - on the markets of services for electricity transmission; significant percentage constitute the cases related to preventing access to the wholesale market of electric power and other violations on the retail markets, such as when a person avoided a mandatory signing of a contract. Also there are case related to imposing unfavorable contract conditions, breaching the established pricing procedures, and some other types of violations.

In Mr Korolyov's opinion, there are several methods to reduce the number of antimonopoly violations on those markets. In particular, development of the standard contracts regulating legal relations between the market entities and their consumers. Applying standard Regulations for providing services in the electric power supply industry, devised by and approved with FAS Russia, can also be useful.

It is important to promote public discussion of the law enforcement practice and the provisions of the normative-legal acts in the electric power supply industry, violations of which can constitute the antimonopoly offences. Such discussions can be organized at the meetings of the FAS Russia's Expert Councils. FAS Russia is developing or is participating in drawing up the new, up-to-date normative regulatory acts; for instance, preparations are being made for adopting the Rules for Antimonopoly Regulation and Control over the Electric Power Industry.

Apart from the antimonopoly violations, today there are several other problems facing the wholesale electric power market. Those problems are related to unjustified increase of prices for end-users when the demand for electric power is declining.

Mr Korolyov suggested a possible solution: instead of paying for all available capacities, it would be useful to select the most efficient capacities that are in actual demand, and also accumulate reasonable reserves essential for developing the efficient model of the long-term power market. Some problems on the market are related to translation of non-regulated prices on the wholesale market to the retail markets. The specialized agencies, including FAS Russia, have formulated the draft Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation on establishing a unified translation mechanism for small and large consumers.