OREANDA-NEWS. December 17, 2013. Roszdravnadzor sent an information letter “On Providing State Licensing Services in the Electronic Form” to the Heads of its regional Departments, licensing bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federations, as well as medical and pharmaceutical companies.

The initiative to send the letter was put forward by several experts on 3rd October 2013 at a session of the Working Group on licensing medical and pharmaceutical activities, formed at the Expert Council of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) for developing competition in social sphere and health care.

In this letter Roszdravnadzor informed medical and pharmaceutical companies that under No. 210-FZ Federal Law “On Organizing Provision of State and Municipal Services” that licensing services can be obtained in the electronic form using informational-and-telecommunications technologies, including use of a single portal of state and municipal services and (or) regional portals of state and municipal services.

In providing state licensing service, Roszdravnadzor exercises inter-departmental electronic cooperation, including exchanging information with the government authorities (the Federal Tax Service, the Federal State Service for Registration, Cadastre and Cartography, Rospotrebnadzor and the Treasury of the Russian Federation, etc.), and does not require presentation of documents that are at disposal of these federal bodies, by the license applicants and licensees. It considerably simplifies the licensing procedures for the applicants.

Roszdravnadzor recommends that the heads of medical and pharmaceutical companies as well as licensees that have numerous structural units (branches) in different subjects of the Russian Federation should pay special attention to Clause 2 Article 3 of No.99-FZ Federal Law “On Licensing Certain Types of Activities”, under which a license can be confirmed by a hard copy of a document issued by a licensing body or an electronic body signed by an electronic signature.

Thus, the problem of providing a hard copy of an original license is resolved by a real, statutory possibility to obtain licenses in the electronic form. However, as specified in the information letter of Roszdravnadzor, services in the electronic form, particularly, obtaining licensees, are not popular among the license applicants and licensees.

FAS supports Roszdravnadzor that obtaining electronic licensees by organizations will considerably reduce the burden of overall costs upon legal entities and individual entrepreneurs in re-licensing procedure, particularly, when changing addresses of the locations of exercising licensed activities by legal entities or individual entrepreneurs, and also changing the list of works and services constituting the licensed type of activities.