OREANDA-NEWS. November 14, 2012. Kiev hosted the 21st meeting of the Headquarters for Joint Investigations of Violations of the Antimonopoly Law of the CIS Member-States, formed by the Interstate Council on Antimonopoly Policy for developing action-oriented cooperation between the antimonopoly authorities of the CIS member-states (ICAP), reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

The Head of the Headquarters, Deputy Head of FAS Anatoly Golomolzin informed participants about the results of considering the report on the State of Competition on the market of sale of food products in trade networks in the CIS member-states at a session of the Council of the Head of the CIS States (on 28th September 2012 in Yalta). The Report was highly praised by the Heads of the CIS Governments.

To enforce the conclusions and proposals presented in the Report, the Headquarters discussed the draft Actions Plan that included implementing measures aimed at developing competition on the retail market, particularly, by eliminating anticompetitive agreements and discriminatory practice; exercising effective control over economic concentration; suppressing the facts of misleading consumers, including dissemination of incorrect advertisings. A special role in the draft Action Plan is devoted to the events to be organized jointly by the antimonopoly agencies and the authorized bodies the CIS member-states for goods quality and safety control and consumer rights protection.

One of the key issues discussed by the Headquarters was liberalization of air traffic between the CIS member-states. Participants emphasized importance of active involvement of the CIS antimonopoly bodies in the negotiations of the aviation authorities of these states. The members of the Headquarters agreed to exchange information about the negotiations of their countries scheduled in the near future.

The Headquarters emphasized experiences of Ukraine and Russia that are most advanced in the negotiations towards liberalizing air traffic.

Analyzing development of competition on the telecommunications markets in the CIS member-states, participants approved the key areas of the Headquarters work in telecommunications; particularly, inter-state review of wholesale and retail prices for roaming communications services in order to improve market transparency, eliminating price differences for roaming services and international communications services, protect subscribers from “shocking bills”, etc.

To expand the zone of decreased roaming prices, the Headquarters decided to more actively cooperate with the antimonopoly bodies of Turkey and China.

Another item on the agenda was the efforts of the Working Group on pricing on the oil markets and oil products and the methods of their functioning, formed upon an initiative of the antimonopoly bodies of Austria and Russia. The WG had four meetings in 2012; the fifth meeting will focus on drafting a summary report and recommendations based on the previous meetings. The WG has an open format; therefore, the antimonopoly bodies of the CIS member-states, that earlier were not involved, have expressed their intention to join the Group. Overall, representatives of 17 countries took part in the meetings of the Working Group.

Finally, the Headquarters looked into preparation of a Report based on an analysis of the pharmaceutical markets of the CIS member-states. Members of the Headquarters discussed the main legal and methodological problems of Report preparation and outlined the ways to resolve them.

The work on the draft Report on the Pharmaceutical Industry will continue taking into account earlier Headquarters’ decisions about the stages and timeframe for preparing the report. The draft report will be presented to ICAP in 2013.