OREANDA-NEWS. March 12, 2013. “FAS exposed numerous facts of violating the antimonopoly law by the authorities of the constituent territories of the Russian Federation and local self-government bodies in organizing regular passenger transportation by road transport on city, suburban and inter-municipal routes”, stated Deputy Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) Anatoly Golomolzin at the Round Table on “The Procedures for Allocating Contracts and Licenses for Rendering Local and Regional Transportation Services”.

Sessions of the OECD Competition Committee, its Working Groups and Global Competition Forum took place from 25th February to 1st March 2013 in Paris (France).

Anatoly Golomolzin pointed out that FAS hoped that most of controversial issues related to violations by regional and local authorities would be resolved with adopting a federal law establishing a single approach of the authorities and local self-regulated bodies to providing transportation services to the population. “The practice of FAS investigations of the antimonopoly cases on passenger transportation underlines the need to improve the law on organizing transportation services for the population, in the part of establishing unified requirements for organization of passenger transportation at the federal level”, said Anatoly Golomolzin.

The governments of many countries try to introduce competition to the market of transportation services by announcing competitive bidding for private service suppliers. They use various mechanisms for distributing contracts / licenses and parameters of such mechanisms can make a significant impact upon the results of competition enforcement. The Round Table participants exchanged experience in the field of concluding contracts for providing local and regional bus transportation and about the role that competition plays in rendering such services and / or selecting the suppliers.

On 25th February the Working Group on Competition and Regulation of the OECD Competition Committee discussed such issues, important to the entire competition community, as use of the OECD Recommendations on Competition Assessment* and adopting a Report on using the Recommendations. The document includes clear, practical proposals regarding efficient functioning of the competition assessment mechanism. The Report is the first attempt to assess experience of the OECD member-states on using the Recommendations since they were adopted in 2009. Under the framework of a long-term project on “Assessment of the Actions of Competition Authorities”, the participants discussed the consequences of enforcement efforts of competition authorities upon consumers.

* The OECD Recommendations on Competition Assessment give a definition of the concept of “competition assessment”. It is a method for identifying the existing or proposed public policies and measures that can improperly restrict or distort competition, with a revision of such policies or measures in order to adopt more pro-competitive alternatives maintaining the original goals of the public policy.

This is both a process and a method of analysis enabling to identify competition-restricting policy and measures and to carry out reforms.