OREANDA-NEWS. May 22, 2013. The Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), Igor Artemiev, and a Co-Chair of “Business Russia”, Alexander Galushka, signed an Agreement on Cooperation in the course of an extended session of the General Council of “Business Russia” National Non-Governmental Organization.

The subject of the Agreement is cooperation and coordination on the pressing issues of competition development and protection of entrepreneurship. Some of the key areas of cooperation are organization of events and preparing proposals on improving the Actions Plan (Road Map) on “Developing Competition and Improving the Antimonopoly Policy”.

The parties had a constructive dialogue on the most pressing issues that concern the entrepreneurial community. The main themes for discussion were organization of efficient public control over state procurement, methods of determining an acceptable dominance threshold and monopolistically high prices, enforcement and improving Article 178 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, adverse impact of municipal unitary enterprises upon developing competition on the regional markets and a necessity of special attention of the antimonopoly bodies to the problems in customs procedures.

Summing up the meeting, the parties agreed about operational cooperation on the basis of working groups on the key issues of cooperation. The parties also emphasized importance of developing the best practices (cases) on some problems of developing competition on certain sectors and markets, with proposals to resolve them. Such cases must form the basis to devise new sections of the Road Map.

“Today development of Russian economy largely depends on development of the antimonopoly law – the code of competitive conduct. The entrepreneurial community plays the decisive role in this process. The Federal Antimonopoly Service will continue closely cooperating with “Business Russia” in order to create conditions for developing bona fide competition, improving the tools of antimonopoly (first of all, preventative) control, establishing the best practice of competitive conduct, and improving FAS work through feedback from entrepreneurs”, pointed out Igor Artemiev.