OREANDA-NEWS. September 08, 2014. Deputy Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Andrey Tsyganov, chaired a meeting of FAS Expert Council on Agro-Industrial Complex.

Members of the Expert Council and representatives of agro-industrial unions and associations discussed measures to prevent an unreasonable growth of prices for agricultural products, raw materials and food products, as well as saturating the market with domestic products under special economic measures to support security of the Russian Federation.

Recently, FAS, in particular, sent a letter to associations and unions explaining that there should not be violations of the antimonopoly law that lead to an unreasonable price increase.

“If you notice that agricultural producers have considerably increased wholesale ex-works prices for raw materials or processers of raw materials increased prices for their products, please petition to FAS – your petition can be a signal for inspections”, emphasized the Head of FAS Department for Control over Chemical Industry and Agro-Industrial Complex, Anna Mirochinenko.

Participants also emphasized the importance of systematizing the measures exercised by the authorities at all levels to monitor prices for food products since it takes significant human resources of market participants.

According to the Expert Council, to build up domestic production of agricultural products it is necessary to improve the mechanisms of subsidizing investment projects by applying a mechanism of partial compensation of the investment costs for already completed projects, state support for developing processing capacities and optimize logistic costs. It means, in particular, reducing the number of intermediaries and developing logistic food centres enabling agricultural producers to directly supply their products to trading networks.

In the areas where it is not possible to build up domestic production in the short-term, participants proposed to intensify the negotiation process at all levels of the authorities with the countries that are alternative suppliers for better supply conditions.

To stimulate demand it was proposed to introduce target aid for buying socially important food products that under WTO norms belong to the “green basket”. FAS supported the idea.

Summing up the meeting, Andrey Tsyganov said: “All proposals put forwards will be included in the Protocol; and at the end of November – beginning of December we will organize another Expert Council on Agro-Industrial Complex, where the situation on the food products market will be discussed in more detail”.