OREANDA-NEWS. April 20, 2010. Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (ACU) fined the state enterprise Yuzhny (Southern) Commercial Sea Port (Odessa region) at UAH1 million (USD 125.000) for abuse of its monopoly position in the market of safe navigation services, Transport Business reports citing the ACU statement. The Port during 2009 and the 1st quarter of 2010 was a 100-percent monopolist providing safe navigation services at the harbor.

ACU investigated and found Yuzhny Port was hampering operations of the companies providing handling services at the port by establishing different charge rates, unequal discounts for different companies. Some of the firms did not get any discount at all. ACU has classified these actions as abuse of monopoly power.

The Yuzhny Port that posted UAH1.516.667.000 of revenues should pay out 10%, or 150 million hryvnia. Later, the Port Authority representative at the court admitted to violations and eventually, the Committee reduced the fine to 1 million hryvnia and ordered the Port to eliminate all violations of antitrust law within 10 days.

State-run Commercial Sea Port Yuzhny founded in 1978 is located on the northwest coast of the Black Sea, in the ice-free Small Adzhalyksk (Grygoryivsky) estuary, 30 km northeast of Odessa. The Port is connected to the sea by a 3km-long 14-m-deep canal so pilotage service is required for inbound and outbound vessels. In 2009 CSP Yuzhny had a net income at UAH557.882 million, increasing gross income by 69.75% (UAH2.552.370.000) as compared with 2008’s numbers. Last year the Port’s throughput shrank by 17.79% (17.838m mt) year-on-year.