OREANDA-NEWS. September 12, 2014. The annual international event - “Competition Day in Russia” included the Round Table “Russia – UNCTAD: Developing Cooperation”. The events are organized by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia).

Round Table participants included Deputy Heads of FAS Anatoly Golomolzin and Alexei Dotsenko; General Director of Austria’s Federal Competition Authority, Theodor Thanner; the Head of UNCTAD Competition and Consumer Policies Branch, Hassan Qaqaya; principal legal advisor to UNCTAD Competition and Consumer Policies Branch and the head of COMPAL GLOBAL Programme, Pierre Horna; senior coordinator of Turkey’s competition authority, Ali Demiroz; the Head of FAS Centre for Education and Methodics, Lenar Shafigullin, and others.

As Anatoly Golomolzin stated at the outset of the Round Table, “cooperation between UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and FAS Russia has been developing intensively during a long period of time. This year UNCTAD celebrates its 50th anniversary. During this period UNCTAD has become a global universal platform for discussing the issues of competition. And we are glad that with each year our cooperation only intensifies”.

Next, Hassan Qaqaya and Pierre Horna presented UNCTAD Programme in the field of competition and consumer policies - COMPAL.

The Programme already proved to be an effective platform for the participating countries in Latin America, Africa, South Europe, Asian Pacific region and is considered a global model for cooperation in the antimonopoly field. The Programme provides for exchanging non-confidential information.

The Round Table agenda included several items. The first one was creating databases of the CIS member-states and sectoral databases.

The issue of CIS databases was discussed by the Interstate Council on Antimonopoly Policy (ICAP) on 8th September.

Sectoral databases include the markets of oil products, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals, under the frame of relevant international Working Groups. The initiative is already supported by competition authorities of Austria, Italy and Turkey.

Deputy Head of FAS Alexei Dotsenko presented to the foreign colleagues an open database of Russian antimonopoly authority of case decisions and materials. Hassan Qaqaya emphasized the importance of these efforts and raised an issue of possibility to put links to the database of FAS decisions at UNCTAD database.

All issues discussed during the Round Table will be included in the Memorandum of Understanding between FAS Russia and UNCTAD. They will be further discussed at the beginning of November at an international conference coinciding with the visit of UNCTAD General Secretary, Mukhisa Kituyi, to the Russian Federation.