OREANDA-NEWS. April 29, 2011. In course of a visit to Washington, a delegation of Russian government agencies had a meeting with Mike McFaul, Senior Director for Russia and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, and an Advisor to the President Barak Obama on Russia, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

In course of the dialogue with his foreign colleagues, the Head of the FAS Russia’s Legal Department, Sergey Puzyrevsky discussed the latest development in Russian antimonopoly law and state procurement reform, policial and economic goals of the public initiatives towards reforming the system of government procurement and the problems related to the need to transfer natural monopolies to competitive environment.

“In the near future the State Duma will consider a norm, under which natural monopolies and state-run corporations must place orders for goods and services through competitive bidding”, pointed out Sergey Puzyrevsky.

Sergey Puzyrevsky also emphasized that the main present-day objectives of FAS Russia is to curtail violations committted by government officials, as currently over 50% of all cases initiated by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) are the cases on violating the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” and the Federal Law on State Procurement by officials.

The parties discussed the issue of Russia joining WTO and possible advantages of Russia joining WTP for the antimonopoly bodies of Russia and the USA. Mike McFaul specially outlined that “such meetings re-energise business relations between the two countries”.

Russian experts discussed some aspects of the latest Russian initiatives in the antimonopoly law and the law on state procurement, as well as many others, with Seth Bloom, a legal advisor, the Antitrust Sub-Committee.

Representatives of the US Senate talked about public hearing at the American legislature, on the issues of enforcing the antimonopoly law.