OREANDA-NEWS. September 13, 2011. The Headquarters for Joint Investigations of Antimonopoly Violations by the CIS Member – States discussed Russian approaches to regulating trading activities and the main priorities in developing the law in this field. The Head of FAS Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade, Timophei Nizhegorodtsev, emphasised importance of maintaining a bona fide attitude to competition and developing a habit among participants of retail market to observe the law, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

Courts have already passed first rulings since the Law on Trade came into force. Market participants gave the most positive assessments to establishing the fixed deadlines for fulfilling contract obligations that enabled more effective administration of this field.

Taking to the Headquarters members, Timophei Nizhegorodtsev announced the package of amendments that would be introduced to the Law on Trade, for instance, clarifying the definitions of “trading network” and “trading activities”, modernising Articles 13 and 14 of the Law on Trade, in particular, relieving trading networks from excessive antimonopoly control in case of “organic” company growth.

Some problems of retail market performance relate to historically weak requirements for quality control, as a result of which when producers reduce prices under the pressure from trading networks, the quality of their products deteriorates simultaneously.

Amoung the main areas for further improvement of administration of retail, Timophei Nizhegorodtsev pointed out developing methods for determining product and geographic market boundaries; re-orienting legislation from imposing bans that restrict the methods of cooperation between trading networks and suppliers to assessment of the quality of relations between a network and a supplier; preventing discrimination and imposing services.