OREANDA-NEWS. September 20, 2013. In Listvyanka, the Irkutsk region, the Headquarters for Joint Investigations of Violations of the Antimonopoly Law of the CIS Member-States held its 23rd session as a part of an international event - Russian Competition Day. Deputy Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) Anatoly Golommolzin chaired the meeting.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the antimonopoly bodies of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan as well as the Eurasian Economic Commission and “promoting Competition in the CIS Countries” Non-Commercial partnership.

The Headquarters heard several reports. First, Anatoly Golommolzin presented a “Draft FAS Report on the results of the Work of the International Working Group for Studying Pricing on the Markets of Oil and Oil Products and the Methods of their Performance”, which had already received positive assessments by OECD and UNCTAD.

The Headquarters also supported the draft report. Ukraine and Belarus expressed a desire to learn form the experience of Russia and visit FAS to see how exchange pricing mechanisms work.

Anna Mirochinenko, the Head of FAS Department for Control over Chemical Industry and Agro-Industrial Complex reported about intermediary results achieved by the Working group for studying the grain market in the CIS member-states.

“Grain market is a price-forming market which forms all further trading chains. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the state of competition on this market asset prices for grain storage and warehousing and the rates for grain shipment by all types of transport” commented Anna Mirochinenko.

The Guidelines issued for such analysis were unanimously approved by the attendees Ukraine and Moldova, for example, already started studying the market in more detail.

Anna Mirochinenko also informed participants about monitoring prices for socially important food products in the capital cities of the CIS states. The highest prices were identified in Moscow, where the average mark-up is around 20 %.

The Head of FAS Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade, Timophei Nizhegorodtsev discussed the situation on the pharmaceutical markets of the CIS states: “Competition on the pharmaceutical markets in the CIS is not sufficiently developed. Similar problems with competition development are identified in all CIS states. The Report analyses them and gives recommendations how to make drugs more available in terms of their range and prices”.

“Preliminary monitoring revealed excessive prices for some medicines in certain CIS countries”, added Deputy Head of the Department for Control over Social Sphere and Trade, Nadezhda Sharavskaya.

Summing up the session, FAS proposed to form an international informational platform to exchange data on drug prices similar to the platform for oil and oil products markets, which was supported by the participants.