OREANDA-NEWS. April 14, 2010. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) reviews the finding of the monitoring how in 2009 the executive bodies of the constituent territories of the Russian Federation and local self-government bodies granted plots of land for housing construction from the land in state or municipal property, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

Within a year in all regions of the Russian Federation 2281 plots of land was granted for housing construction (except individual housing construction) and integrated development for the purposes of housing construction, of which: 1872- through auctions, 323 - without an auction. 147 facts of possible antimonopoly violations were revealed, which are being investigated by FAS Russia and its regional bodies.

Rachik Petrosyan, the Head of the FAS Russia's Department for Control over Housing & Utilities, Construction and Natural Resources, points out that efficiency of the auction procedure has already been proved and now auction principles for providing land plots are being extrapolated to other types of construction works.

FAS Russia started inspecting whether the authorities complied with the procedures for providing land plots in Q4 2005. The percentage of land plots provided through auctions increased from 6.3% in 2005 to nearly 83% in 2009. At the same time, the number of antimonopoly violations related to provisions of land plots has decreased.

"Transparency of the procedure for providing land plots for construction will encourage competition among developers due to entry of new market participants, first and foremost, not affiliated with the regional power bodies. Ultimately it must reduce a corruption element in the housing cost per square meter, and the final price will be mainly based on justified construction costs as well as on the basis of demand and supply balance. It seems that in this case residential housing will become cheaper", says Mr. Petrosyan.

According to the schedule, by the end of March 2010 torgi.gov.ru starts working in the testing mode to place information about competitive bidding for federal property. It is expected that from 1st January 2011 all information about such competitive bidding will be publicly accessible through the site.

"The number of auction bidders, and, therefore, efficiency of distribution of state property will increase considerably with launching torgi.gov.ru", adds Mr. Petrosyan. "Already technologies used for developing the site enable to organize in the future competitive bidding for regional property, subsoil resources, forest plots, investment contracts, etc".