OREANDA-NEWS. March 22, 2012. The task of removing administrative barriers in the economy, created by bureaucrats, is as important as combating corruption and it must become one of the priorities in the work of the new Government of the Russian Federation, - said the Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), Igor Artemyev, at a joint press-conference of the Ministry of Economics and the Higher School of Economics, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

The Head of FAS compared the current administrative reform with a dragon, whose heads are being cut off (removing excessive administrative barriers), but new heads grow immediately on the same place. According to Igor Artemyev, only 50% of the decisions made by the Government Commission on the Administrative Reform could be implemented. One of reasons was low performance discipline of the authorities.

Igor Artemyev gave an example of the Federal Customs Service, which according to a decision of the Government Commission on the Administrative Reform should have moved to electronic document management, but failed to achieve it. Unlike the Central Bank, that reached excellent results implementing the decisions made by the Commission within the framework of the administrative reform.

Among positive examples of the measures implemented in course of the administrative reform, Igor Artemyev also mentioned licensing educational activities, certification of educational and academic research institutions, conformity assessment of documents on education, academic degrees and ranks.

A positive effect is noticeable in the field of government registration of births and deaths, government registration and vehicle inspection, registration of Russian citizens, drawing-up and issuing passports.

Actions Plans for health care, fishery, Rostechnadzor (the Federal Service for Environmental, Technical and Nuclear Supervision) are in the initial stage, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade failed to implement any measures at all.

FAS Russia and the Ministry of Economic Development proposed to introduce punishment for negligent officials who fail to execute the decisions of the Government of the Russian Federation, and Government Commission on the Administrative Reform in particular.

“I would propose to form a joint Commission of FAS Russia and the Ministry of Economic Development to impose fine upon those officials who sabotage decisions of the Government of the Russian Federation”, stated Igor Artemyev. The proposed size of the fines shall be from 20,000 to 59,000 Rubles and disqualification can be introduced in the future.

Igor Artemyev also said that within its scope of reference FAS initiates hundreds of cases against the authorities of different levels upon the facts of adopting unlawful, anticompetitive normative legal acts, and reverses dozens of cases of unlawfully providing fee-based services for the population.