OREANDA-NEWS. July 21, 2014. The Ministry of Agriculture of the Chelyabinsk Region violated the antimonopoly law in granting subsidies to agricultural producers.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) found that the Ministry of Agriculture of the Chelyabinsk Region violated the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”, and at the same time terminated the proceedings against the Government of the Chelyabinsk Region due to absence of antimonopoly violations in its actions. The Ministry of Agriculture violated the law by creating discriminatory conditions on granting subsidies to partly compensate the costs of paying interest on credit, a consequence of which could have been restricting, eliminating competition on the market of animal products in the Chelyabinsk Region.

The case was initiated upon a petition of “Uralbroiler” CJSC (Ishalino village, the Chelyabinsk Region) about elements of violating the antimonopoly law in the actions of the Government of the Chelyabinsk Region due to adopting a Decree on 26th February 2013 on the Procedures of granting subsidies in 2013-2015 for compensating some costs of paying interest on credits obtained in Russian credit organizations and loans obtained in agricultural consumer credit cooperatives.

Having analyzed the submitted evidence, FAS established that the norms of the Decree of the Government of the Chelyabinsk Region comply with Part 3 Article 78 of the Budgetary Code of the Russian Federation and do not violate the antimonopoly law.

In the course of the investigation, however, FAS exposed a violation committed by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Chelyabinsk Region.

Calculating subsidies for agricultural producers that combine poultry-breeding with production of other types of animal products, the Ministry used different rates, putting economic entities operating on the same market in unequal position. The antimonopoly law prohibits creating discriminatory conditions.